


Dead Gods

by wonderfulwrites



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Brief suicide ideation, Explicit Language, Fix-It, Gen, More Greek gods than you can shake a stick at, Show level consent issues and violence, Swearing, failed suicide attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-25
Updated: 2014-07-25
Packaged: 2018-02-10 08:00:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 122,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2017221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wonderfulwrites/pseuds/wonderfulwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean thought he was keeping Ben and Lisa safe when he asked Castiel to erase their memories. But when he comes across Ben at a gas station in Florida, memories intact and claiming that Lisa is missing, Dean realizes that the monsters were always going to come for them whether Dean was in their lives or not. </p><p>The Winchesters aren't the only ones who can't stay dead.</p><p>Written for the 2014 spn_j2_bigbang.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. PROLOGUE

**Author's Note:**

> Set during Season 8 in the week or two before 8x19 Taxi Driver, and there are also allusions to Season 9. The internet is my source for the medical knowledge presented in this story, so any blatantly wrong information is entirely my fault for ever believing anything the internet says ever. My eternal thanks to harmony_bites and candygramme for taking the time to beta this fic. 
> 
> The amazing art is by jkivela. See the art post [HERE](http://jkivela.livejournal.com/627350.html).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Brief suicide ideation and a failed suicide attempt in this chapter.

  


  


Dean is three weeks into life post-Sam when he finally manages to get the gun into his mouth. 

He hasn’t been sober since he showed up on Lisa’s doorstep, getting all up and cozy with Jack, Jim, and Jose, John Winchester style, as soon as he parked the Impala in her driveway. Half a week in, he finds a full bottle of Xanax in the Impala’s first aid kit; it is over a year expired, and he doesn’t know where it came from, but the pills work just fine when he washes down three a day with a fifth of whiskey. It makes him sleep more than he wants to, keeps him deep down unconscious where he dreams of fire and blood and Sammy, falling. But it also keeps him calm and easy around Lisa and Ben when he does manage to wake up, keeps the panic of life without Sam from rising to the surface, keeps him from succumbing to the need to scream until his throat is raw and bleeding.

Because it isn’t that Sam is dead. Dead would be better, dead would be preferable. Dead would mean Dean would see Sam again one day up in the attic, their go-straight-to-heaven-do-not-pass-go card having no expiration date, and all. Dead would mean he could mourn and grieve and then move on, have an apple pie life or not, hunt or not, wouldn’t matter because he’d see Sam again. But no, Sam is trapped with two pissed off archangels and a half brother they failed to save twice, locked up in a cage designed to hold the devil himself. He is probably suffering right now, if not on the rack, then in a lake of fire or in suffocating darkness or in some kind of horrific agony Dean can’t imagine, suffering and screaming for eternity in a place Dean will never be able to reach.

And here Dean is alive, breathing, with a soft pillow under his head and a woman who is letting him stumble around her life, not complaining about all of the emotional baggage he’s dragging along with him, only asking that he not drink in front of Ben. He gets to eat and sleep and not suffer in a world without Sam, a world that just rolls on being fucked up and miserable, unaware of what was sacrificed so it could live.

The horror of it all hangs on him in a thick, miasmic cloud, haunting him awake and asleep. He does his best to bury it when he’s around Lisa or Ben, even though he sees what he must look like reflected in their eyes. He tries to stay out of their way as much as possible, though they always seem to be right there, being gentle and pleasant and normal, an ever present reminder of the promise he had made to Sam. Why would Sam make him do this to them? What can Dean even bring to their lives other than danger and misery?

And then one night he struggles awake from yet another dream of watching Sam topple into the black abyss of the Pit, and he’s done, no more, can’t take another minute of it.

To Hell with his promise.

He stumbles downstairs, across the back yard and into the garage where the car has been sitting idle for three weeks, a hollow shell of memories that Dean can’t even look at.

The garage is dark except for the spill of streetlight through the open side door. It gives him just enough light to find the Impala, to get the door open. He climbs into the front seat, into the cocoon of leather and home and Sam. The 1911 is in the glove compartment where he had left it. He sits on the passenger side where Sam used to ride, pressed into the corner where the seat meets the door, and goes calm and still, relieved to see the end in sight.

The gun is loaded and familiar in his hand. A tiny sliver of orange street light gleams on the barrel, and he sits there for the longest time, forever maybe, staring at that little gleam of light, just sort of existing, empty and comfortable with the idea of ending it all, promises be damned. 

Time passes; birds start singing, the street light goes off, and gentle gray morning light spills though the side door in its place. Dean leans his head against the window and listens to the neighborhood come alive with the sounds of dogs barking and car doors slamming and the neighbors next door screaming at each other across their house. The front door of Lisa’s house slams, the engine of her CRV turns over; he listens as she backs it out of the driveway, her brakes screeching a little. Dean wishes he could feel bad that he will never get to fix them for her.

And it’s like that’s what he’s been waiting for, for them to leave so they won’t hear the gunshot. He feels nothing but peace as he raises the gun and gets the barrel between his teeth, presses it hard against the roof of his mouth. It’s cold and metallic and oily against the flat of his tongue, and if he can just squeeze the trigger, it can be over, he can stop being alive. 

Seconds pass, then minutes. Saliva pools under his tongue. Tears well out of the corners of his eyes, slide down his cheeks. His arm gets heavy, begins to shake; the gun becomes a lead weight in his hand.

He doesn’t squeeze the trigger.

Something rises inside of him, survival instinct maybe, or guilt – no, panic, a blare of emotional static. It rips through him in a wave, surges up and out, and Dean is suddenly dropping the gun. It clatters into the floorboard as he scrambles sideways, nearly wrenching the door handle off in his attempt to get out of the car. 

He spills out head first, tumbling onto the hard concrete of the garage floor, scraping up his palms like he's seven years old and falling off his bike. The garage is spinning around him, his stomach is twisting and churning, acid burns at the back of his throat. Dean slumps back against the back door, solid against his back, legs akimbo, clutching his head in hands. His heart is racing, his breathing coming in panicked little pants. This is awful; this is Hell. This is a thousand times worse than the rack, even worse than getting off of the rack and picking up the knife, and he can’t even find a way to make it end.

He can’t break his promise to Sam.

“Dean?”

Dean snaps his head up.

Ben is standing in the open doorway, backpack over one shoulder, thumb tucked under the strap. He’s blurry, one Ben doubling over the other, but Dean can still see how wide his eyes are, how round and shocked.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in school?” His words slur badly; he sounds as drunk and strung out on Xanax as he actually is, and his mouth tastes like gun metal.

“Mom said I could take the bus today.” He takes a step further into the garage, and the focus of Dean’s panic shifts, because, God, no, Ben can’t see him like this. “Are you okay?”

Dean shakes his head, holds one hand out defensively. “Don’t, Ben. Stay there.”

The double image of Ben moves in closer, his black Chucks scraping on the concrete. “You should get up.” 

Dean shakes his head. “No, Ben-“

“Yes. You’re going to freak Mom out, and she might make you leave,” Ben says, like it’s the worst thing he can possibly imagine. “Get up. _Please_.” 

“Ben,” Dean says, dropping his head back against the door of the Impala and closing his eyes. He feels like he is going to spin right off the earth. “You don’t understand.”

“Grown-ups always say that like it makes what they’re doing okay when it’s not.” His voice is trembling, like he’s holding back tears. “This is wrong, and you know it. I don’t know why it is, but you do, so get up and stop being a little bitch.”

The profanity is like ice water across Dean’s face. He looks up at Ben, standing not two feet away, fists clenched at his side in anger, tears pooling in his eyes.

Dean swallows around a lump in his throat, shame sinking into every cell of his body and expanding; it seems like there is more of it in his veins than blood. He nods again, helpless to do anything other than what Ben says.

“Yeah. Okay.” 

Dean gets his feet under him, tries to push up, but he stumbles sideways and ends up back on his ass.

“Shit,” he mutters. The garage is whirling around him now, around and around and around, and his gorge is rising, and Jesus, he’s already embarrassed to high heaven, and the last thing he needs is to do is vomit up the last twelve hours of alcohol churning in his stomach in front of the kid.

“Here,” Ben says, and puts his hand on Dean’s arm to help him up.

The vertigo, the nausea, they roll back like the ocean receding from the shore. His double vision snaps back unto one clean line, and calm rolls over him, smothering him. It’s like being under water, body moving slowly along some unseen current, all quiet and peaceful and pliable. 

This time Dean does get to his feet, a hand on Ben’s shoulder to stabilize himself. Ben’s eyes are huge, his eyelashes wet as he looks up at Dean with concern. With fear. 

Dean hadn’t thought he could feel any worse. He was wrong.

“I’m okay, Ben.” He runs his hand over Ben’s hair, a reflexive act of comfort he used to give Sam when he was little. “I’m okay.”

He starts moving, determined to stay upright in front of Ben; he can’t let Ben see this get any worse. He’s a little wobbly and the world spins around him, but he manages to keep himself upright all the way back into the house. Ben is on his heels the whole time, as if there’s anything he can do for Dean if he falls on his ass again, and hovers in the guestroom doorway while Dean climbs into bed, dirty jeans and scraped palms and all. 

Dean throws his arm over his face, the whiskey and Xanax and exhaustion of grief making his body heavy, trying to tug him down into sleep. “Go to school, Ben. I’ll be okay.”

Ben doesn’t reply, doesn’t move; Dean can almost feel the weight of his gaze all but boring into his soul.

Dean lifts his arm; Ben is still hovering in the doorway. “Ben, go.”

Ben nods, dropping his eyes and hunching his shoulder. “Okay,” Ben says, and Dean hears his footsteps retreat down the hall.

He can’t keep his eyes open after that, asleep before he hears the front door close. He dreams, of course, he always dreams, dreams of standing in the rose garden with Sam’s body in that skeezy white suit and Lucifer looking out of his eyes, telling him, no, _bragging_ that Sam says yes in Detroit-

“It’s okay. It’s okay. I promise, it’s okay,” someone says from a blooming rose bush to his left, and Lucifer-wearing-Sam dissolves into darkness.

Dean surfaces long enough to roll onto his side, brushing away the hand on his arm, and then he’s dreaming again, this time of fire and the fetid heat of Hell, of the winged things screaming out their joy above him, of the smell of brimstone and misery and blood. He dreams of Sam on the rack and his own hand carving into his flesh, slicing and cutting, dragging out the agony, his screams-

“Wake up,” someone is saying from behind the wall of blades and hooks and branding irons. “You’re dreaming. Come on, Dean, please. Just wake up.”

Dean doesn’t surface again, but there is blackness for a while before he dreams about Stull Cemetery again, and the glare of the afternoon sun and the biting agony of Sam’s fist on his face and Baby at his back, of watching Bobby die and Castiel implode, and worse, Sam saying _I got him_ , and-

He jerks awake, drenched in sweat and breathing hard. Warm yellow sunlight is spilling through the slats of the blinds. His mouth is dry and sour, his head is pounding mercilessly. The chirping of birds outside and the low level hum of the refrigerator downstairs are white noise in the silence of the house.

Dean rolls over, onto his back and stares at the ceiling. The ceiling fan is spinning lazily above him, ghosting cool air over his damp skin, and the familiar sound of another person’s breathing is soothing -

He sits up, the knife under his pillow already in his hand, ready to defend himself even though he’s not sure he wants to be alive, and looks down, towards the end of the bed to see a dark head bent over a Gameboy.

Dean’s panic recedes, and he slips the knife back under the pillow. It’s Ben, sitting on the floor near the foot of the bed, playing video games on silent and decidedly not in school. 

Dean glances at the clock on the nightstand. It’s quarter after one.

"Damn it, Ben. You didn't go to school."

Ben ducks his head down in an action that will soon become very familiar to Dean, one of Ben’s tells when he has done something he knows he shouldn’t have. "I was afraid to leave you alone. You kept making noises in your sleep every time I tried to leave."

Dean can't think of anything to say to that, because the humiliation of knowing a ten year old kid has been babysitting him all day is a kick in the gut.

And then Ben looks up at him, and his eyes are hazel green and he's got a smattering of freckles across his nose and he’s wearing that same mulish expression John used to wear when no meant no and there was no amount of arguing or whining that he and Sam could do to change that. "I'll tell mom myself when she gets home.” 

Dean forgets to breathe for a moment as he stares at Ben. He thought that Sam had made him promise to live the apple pie life with Lisa and Ben because that’s what Sam had wanted, that’s what he had equated to happiness, but now, sitting here with a spitting image of himself at the foot of his bed, daring him to tell him he had done something wrong, he realizes that Sam had seen what Dean is seeing. This kid is his kid, he knows it in his gut, _his_ , and when Sam had made him promise to come here, Sam had known it, too.

Dean is stunned and he's horrified and deep down fucking ashamed because Sam had sent him to live with his son, and he had nearly put a bullet in his brain at the exact time that Ben was passing the garage on the way to the bus.

So this is rock bottom. He thought he had seen rock bottom before, back when he had almost said yes to Michael, but no, this is what it really is, having so little will to live that he would risk letting his own kid find him with his brains splattered all over the car. 

Dean sits up, swings his legs over the edge of the bed, rubs his eyes. His head throbs in protest, but he ignores it; a hangover is hardly enough penance for his near suicide.

“Yeah, well, I guess you better enjoy what’s left of your freedom then.” Dean pauses, considers. “She grounds you, right?”

Ben eyes him a minute, like Dean has grown two heads. “Yeah. What else would she do?”

Dad used to make him and Sam do pushups or clean all the guns for a month straight, but clearly grounding seems to be the effective punishment in these parts if Ben can’t seem to imagine any other kind.

Dean shrugs. “Dunno man.”

“She’ll probably take away my Gameboy.” Ben sighs forlornly. “And TV, too. She’s going to be so _mad_.”

And Lisa isn’t just mad, Lisa is furious. She takes away the Gameboy and the TV as predicted, and sends Ben up to his room until dinner. Then she turns on Dean, arms crossed, a set expression on her face, and Dean knows that she’s ready to throw him out.

“Dean, I can’t let you—“

“I know,” he says, cutting her off. “I’ll go. But-“

He takes the bottle of Xanax from the pocket of his flannel. She looks from him to the pills and back again, her expression sliding from angry to confused to scared.

“Please take them, Lis. I don’t know what else to do.”

Her hand comes up slowly, like she’s afraid Dean might snatch his hand back. She wraps her fingers around the bottle and takes the bottle from him, the tips of her fingers grazing his. 

She reads the label, and her eyes go wide. “Xanax, Dean? With the amount you’ve been drinking-“

He hunches his shoulders and hangs his head, doing a fair impression of Ben. “Yeah. I know.”

He expects her to yell at him, to have a go at him for drug abuse or the example he’s setting for Ben or something, but all she does is stare at him for a long time before she says, “What else do you have?”

She goes with him to the garage where he digs out the first aid kit out of the trunk and hands over all the meds he has – generic Vicodin, Lortab, a couple of amoxycilin rattling around in a Percocet bottle, even the ibuprofen. Then he sits at the kitchen table, the heels of his palms pressed into his eyes while she dumps anything that needs a doctor’s prescription down the garbage disposal and runs it for a solid five minutes.

When Ben is allowed back downstairs for dinner, he takes one look at Dean’s hangdog expression and asks, “Did you get grounded, too?”

“Yes,” Lisa says in a stern mom voice, setting a bowl of mashed potatoes between them. “Now eat. Both of you.”

Ben just shrugs and starts eating, taking it all – the grounding, Lisa’s anger, Dean’s mortifying breakdown in the garage - like a man, which is what Dean should have been doing all along instead of trying to eat his gun. Right then and there he decides he’s going to do what Sam sent him there to do and takes the first bite of real food he has had in days while sitting across the table from his son.

But to Dean’s great shame, hitting rock bottom isn’t enough to stop him from drinking, and it comes nowhere near to healing the Sam-shaped hole in his heart, but it’s enough to get him kicking towards the surface. He cuts back on the hard liquor, avoids anything stronger than ibuprofen, and gets his shit together enough to get a job. He fixes Lisa’s brakes and takes out the trash, teaches Ben about carburetors and socket wrenches, and eventually kisses Lisa in the laundry room one night, crowding her up against the washing machine during the spin cycle. He lets himself integrate into their life even as he starts hunting down demonology books, determined to find a way to save Sam between baseball games and the occasional night out with their neighbor, Sid. Every now and then, he even feels a pale shadow of what someone might call happiness if it weren’t sitting right next to the dark, black pit where Sam used to be.

Sometimes, though, when Ben is doing his homework or helping Dean fix up the old truck he bought because driving the Impala hurts too much or is just sitting there playing on his Gameboy, he wonders why, if Ben is his son, Zachariah went through all the trouble of resurrecting Adam. He could have come at Ben, could have given Lisa cancer or removed her lungs and forced a terrified ten-year-old to say yes, but he hadn’t. It bothers him for a moment, makes him wonder, but then Ben looks up at him and grins or scowls or asks him if everything is okay, and Dean shrugs it off, lets it go, because Ben has dodged an angel shaped bullet, and he shouldn’t be looking the gift horse in the mouth.

It’s only later that Dean learns that he should have pried open the horse’s mouth and counted every damned tooth.


	2. Chapter 2

A thunderstorm is coming in from the west.

It’s two in the afternoon, but the sky is dark enough that the gas station florescent lights have already flickered on, washing out the pumps and the parking lot in a harsh, electric brightness. A damp wind is blowing ahead of the storm like a harbinger, tossing palm trees and trash and hibiscus bushes, knocking down a couple of crows every time they try to take flight, whipping at Dean’s clothes like it’s trying to claw them away. Lightening crawls up through the clouds just before a clap of thunder rumbles in the distance, a flash and a bang, a celestial shot gun blast. 

It’s going to be a bad storm.

Dean shivers, tugs the collar of his jacket up over the back of his neck. They’re heading south on I-95, towards what sounds like a textbook salt and burn in a tiny town on the coast of Florida. The cars and semis flow along the interstate with a roar like a freight train, and Sam is visible through the front window of the gas station, standing in line with an armful of food while Dean tops off the gas tank. It all seems par for the course, just the usual flow of their daily lives, another gas station on their way to another job, topping off the tank and picking up snacks while normal people go on with their lives around them, same old same old. 

But Dean knows he’s being watched.

It’s that prickling sensation between his shoulder blades, the one he usually associates with being hunted by the things they hunt, demons, vampires, the occasional genocidal angel. It might be one of those things, it might be something else, it may just be a run of the mill human thinking about carjacking the Impala. But it’s not nothing. It’s never nothing.

He scans the parking lot casually, like he’s just killing time while the pump ticks off cents to the third decimal place on the display screen, but he’s taking it all in, everyone around him, looking for whatever is making his skin crawl: a soccer mom getting gas one pump over, a couple of sunburned construction workers lingering by a truck overloaded with rebar, a kid standing in front of a poster advertising two liters, a redneck climbing out of his beat up ’84 TransAm – 

Dean’s attention jerks back to the kid with a start. 

His red hoodie is stained and grimy, the knees of his jeans are torn, his black Chucks are mangled all to hell. His hair looks like it hasn’t been washed in weeks, and a fresh, road rash-like scrape scores the side of his face. All signs point to living on the streets and living hard. He’s looking at Dean like he recognizes him, and even though Dean knows that shouldn’t be possible – for so many reasons that shouldn’t be possible – but he has had so much experience now with things that shouldn’t be possible that he should probably stop thinking in those terms all together.

And yet.

Dean slides his free hand under his jacket, seeking the handle of the 1911 for comfort more than anything else. He’s not sure what he’s looking at, if he’s looking at anything at all. He might be hallucinating, he might be dreaming, he might be undergoing some monster’s version of mind voodoo. He stares at the kid and the kid stares back, while on the other side of the pump, the soccer mom climbs back in her minivan with her screaming kids and pulls away.

Sam comes strolling out of the store just then, head down as he fiddles with the receipt, bag containing their usual travel snacks hanging from his hand. He walks right by the kid without seeing him – that’s a point in favor of hallucination – but when he looks up and sees Dean’s attention is distracted, he moves to Dean’s side on high alert, trying to follow his line of sight.

“What is it?”

Dean nods toward his possible hallucination. “One o’clock. Do you see him?” 

A beat of silence, then Sam says, “Shit, Dean, is that-“

“Yeah. It is.” Dean isn’t sure if he’s relieved or worried that he isn’t hallucinating. “Get the holy water.” 

Sam hustles around to the other side of the Impala, ducks inside for the flask in the glove compartment. Dean pulls out the gas nozzle, jams it back into the pump, and screws in the gas cap without breaking eye contact with the kid. He straightens, stuffs his hands in his pockets, glances around to see if anything else suspicious catches his eye. When nothing does, he beckons the kid.

“Ben,” he calls out over the rumble of an oversized pickup that has pulled in where the soccer mom’s van had just been. “Come here.”

The kid hunches his shoulders like he’s expecting an earful, mouth pulled down in a sullen frown, and threads between one of those yuppie hybrid coupes and the redneck’s TransAm. He crosses the parking lot, pausing as a white BMW cruises past him, and comes right up to Dean exactly like a puppy expecting to get kicked.

“Hey, Dean.” Even slouching like he is, Dean can see that he has grown a couple of inches, head now at Dean’s shoulders. He’s going to be at least as tall as Dean one day, or if he’s really unlucky, as tall as Sam.

Dean ignores the desire to pull him into a hug. 

“Ben, what are you doing here?”

Sam circles around the front of the car, comes in behind Ben, trapping him between them. 

“Looking for you.” His voice is congested and nasally, and his eyes are glassy, his face flushed like he has a fever. His bottom lip is swollen and freshly split, the road-rash on his face is bright red and newly clotted. He glances back at Sam, his shoulders hunching even more. “You’re going to do the holy water thing, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” Dean replies, being gentle just in case it’s actually Ben. “You know we have to.”

Ben nods. “Yeah. Okay.”

“Hold out your hand,” Sam says.

He extends one arm towards Sam, a knobby wrist jutting out of the sleeve of his hoodie, and Sam splashes just a little bit of holy water over the back of his hand. There’s no smoke, no burning or boiling of skin, so that’s one down, one to go. The other will have to be checked in the car. Not the most sensible choice, but slicing open a kid’s arm in a busy parking lot isn’t, either. 

“Get in the car.” Dean tosses the keys to Sam then opens the back door for Ben. Ben obediently slides in, and Dean follows, shutting them into the muffled quiet of his girl. Sam passes him a silver knife from the front seat. 

Ben eyes the knife anxiously.

“Just a nick, Ben.” This is killing him, having to go through the drill with Ben, but he has to be sure. He has to. He can’t take chances on Ben. “Promise.”

Dean pushes Ben’s sleeve up to the meaty part of his forearm, noting how hot his skin is to the touch, and cuts him shallowly, just enough to draw blood. Ben’s breath hitches, but again there’s no burning, no smoke, and the blood that wells up is red and human. 

He glances at Sam for confirmation, gets a nod of agreement. Dean puts away the knife and fishes the first aid kit out of the floorboard. Ben slumps back and watches while Dean tapes a piece of gauze to the wound, even tolerates the anti-bacterial ointment he slathers across the scrape on his face.

The Impala rumbles to life around them. 

“So did I pass the monster test?” Ben asks as Sam steers her out of the parking lot.

“Yeah. You’re good.” Dean has about a million questions – where is Lisa, what is he doing at a gas station in _Florida_ , how the hell does he remember him at all - but he bites them back in favor of feeling Ben’s forehead. He’s hot, very hot; Dean had seen Sam through enough bouts of the flu and strep throat when they were kids to know a high fever when he sees one. “You’re burning up, Ben.”

Ben nods weakly. “I think it’s pneumonia.”

Dean scoffs. “Yeah, because you’d know.” He digs through the first aid kit again, looking for the bottle of aspirin. There’s only a bottle of expired Demerol, which isn’t going to do Ben any good. “Sam, where’s the damn aspirin?”

Sam leans to the side, pops open the glove compartment, and passes the bottle back to him without looking away from the road. The gas station bag crinkles, and he also passes back a bottle of water. Dean spills two aspirin into Ben’s palm, hands him the water.

“What now?” Sam asks from the front seat, glancing at Dean in the rearview mirror.

Dean watches Ben bolt down the water. “Hotel, I guess. But let’s get where we’re going, first. It’s, what, an hour further on?”

“Something like that. We’re still doing the job?” Sam asks with a note of surprise in his voice. 

His father had done dozens of jobs while he and Sam were out of commission with the flu or a stomach virus and, in Sam’s case, that one time with the chicken pox, so Dean isn’t concerned about anyone being sick. He just doesn’t want Ben anywhere near a hunt, even something as cut and dry as a haunting. He still breaks out in a cold sweat when he remembers finding Ben in the trunk of the Impala, holding the shot gun, or worse, having to put it in his hands himself with Lisa bleeding out in his arms.

But practicalities had to be considered, and his first priority is to make sure Ben is safe and warm and that the fever breaks. Marathon road trips back the way they came aren’t going to get the job done.

“Maybe. I don’t know. One thing at a time, Sammy.”

“I’m okay, Dean,” Ben says, trying to sound all casual. “You guys can do whatever you need to.” 

And then a wet, chest wracking cough erupts from him, completely invalidating his assertion. He curls into himself and coughs against his sleeve; it sounds painful and disgusting and far more serious than a simple chest cold.

“Yeah,” Dean says dryly, “you seem perfectly healthy.” 

Sam passes back a handful of fast food napkins from their last food stop. A staccato of huge rain drops splatter against the windshield, the first fruits of the impending storm, almost drowned out by Ben’s churning cough. When it just keeps going, Dean rubs the kid’s back to show solidarity.

“This sucks,” Ben says when he comes up for air, voice raw. 

“That’s the general consensus. Feel like you can breathe again?”

Ben nods, wiping at his mouth with a napkin.

“Good. Then tell me why you’re in freaking Florida looking for me.” 

Ben goes all kicked puppy again. “Don’t get mad at me.”

“Don’t get mad at you?” This is going nowhere good. Dean can feel it in his bones. “If you feel the need to precede your explanation with ‘don’t get mad at me,’ there’s a pretty good chance I’m going to get mad at you.”

“That doesn’t really make me want to tell you.”

“Too bad. Spit it out.”

Ben looks like he wants to throw open the door and dive into traffic. “I’m having dreams.”

Dean doesn’t so much get mad as leap into an immediate panic. “Dreams?” 

Ben nods. “I’ve been having dreams, like, about the future. I dreamt I would find you here, and I did.”

Sam glances back in the rearview mirror again, shares a look with Dean.

“Explain that in a little bit more detail, Ben.” Dean is rather proud of how calm he sounds.

“They’re mostly just useless dreams. Where mom left her keys, or that the crazy old lady down the street was going to ask me to move her trash cans for her.” Ben pauses to cough wetly again. “Usually they don’t make a lot of sense until they happen. But if I ask them to show me stuff, they will.”

“And that’s how you found us.”

Ben nods.

“Are you having headaches, Ben?” Sam says from the front seat. “Or maybe dreaming while you’re awake?”

Dean’s blood runs cold. “Sam.”

“No.” The look of confusion on Ben’s face lets him know that, at least, is true. “They’re just, you know, dreams. When I sleep.”

“Do the dreams come with headaches?” Sam asks.

“Sam!” Dean all but shouts.

Ben starts, eyes Dean nervously. “No. No headaches.”

“I think it’s something we need to ask,” Sam says in that irritatingly reasonable way of his.

“Sam, no.” The hallucinations caused by the Djinn are still so clear in his mind, Lisa sliding up Ben’s bedroom wall, and Yellow Eyes in the doorway, with his arm around Ben.... “Not even possible.” 

“Why not, Dean? Yellow eyes said there were other generations-“

“And Yellow Eyes is dead. And he said he wasn’t having migraines or visions. I think it’s safe to say it isn’t that. So drop it.”

Sam nods, letting it go for now, but Dean has no doubt that he’ll hear about it again.

Next issue then. “And your mom. Where is she?”

Ben changes then, gets smaller, sinks back into himself. This isn’t fear of getting told off, this is just fear, real, gut twisting fear. Dean has seen it on Ben’s face before, back in the warehouse with Lisa possessed and dying, and seeing it again kills whatever thread of hope he might have had.

“I don’t know. She left work one night a few weeks ago and never made it home. No one saw or heard anything. She was just...gone.” His voice drops to a whisper. “I think she’s dead, Dean.”

Dean swallows thickly, nods, decides to leave the questioning there for now, just not able to push further at the moment. He slides an arm around Ben’s shoulder, pulling him in close. Ben stiffens; hurt and rejection flash through Dean, hard and cold, but then Ben sighs, relaxes, and slumps against him, buries his face against Dean’s shoulder.

The torrent of rain unleashes.

* * *

“It looks like a sick Disney princess threw up in here.”

Ben is standing in the bathroom doorway, face screwed up in disgust, his dirty clothes bundled in his arms. Dean had steered him towards the shower first thing, determined to get him clean if he could do nothing else, and Ben had obeyed, bleary eyed and half-asleep, armed with a clean pair of Dean’s track pants and his AC/DC t-shirt. Now that all the grime and dirt of who knows how long on the run has been washed away, he looks fragile and worn out and, despite the inches he has gained, painfully small in Dean’s larger clothing, like the little kid he first met at his birthday party, picking up eight-year-old girls with his bouncy castle.

A horrible, piercing ache twists in his chest, but Dean pushes it away, shoves it down deep. He mutes the TV and glances around the room like it’s all cool, like there’s not a knot of fear setting up house under his diaphragm. Bad enough he’s got Sam and the trials and closing the gates of Hell to worry about, now he’s got Ben, too.

“Yeah, well, we’re in Florida,” Dean says, taking in the pastel blue walls, the pastel pink vanity counter, the pastel yellow bedspreads covered in pastel pink and blue flowers. At this point, he’s pretty desensitized to the wide variety of ugly found in the motel rooms they frequent, and, yeah, this is bad, but it’s hardly the worst he’s seen. It’s probably the worst Ben has ever seen, though, and the twisting ache in his chest intensifies at the thought. “Everything looks like a Disney princess threw up on it.”

Ben seems to consider that for a moment, but doesn’t reply. He shuffles over to his backpack where it sits on a chair next to the TV stand and stuffs in his dirty clothes in one big bundle. He turns back to Dean, visibly shivering, and just kind of stands there, looking miserable. 

“I’m really cold. Is that normal?”

“With a fever? Yeah.” Ben and his freakishly good immune system. Figures the one time he gets sick, it’s on Dean’s watch. “Get under the blankets and get warmed up, and I’ll take a look at those scratches.” 

Dean turns off the TV and tosses aside the remote, while Ben shuffles over to the bed furthest from the door. He sits back against the pillows with the ugly bedspread pooled in his lap, his shoulders trembling as he shivers. 

Dean grabs the first aid kit off the table. “Sam went to get food. You hungry?”

Ben half-heartedly lifts one shoulder. “Not really.”

“When’s the last time you ate?” It has been a while from the way Ben had all but inhaled Sam’s banana before he passed out on Dean’s shoulder in the car. Sam had offered him the entire bag of snacks, but Ben had refused the offer, said the banana was enough.

Another half-shrug. “Before the banana? This morning. Some peanuts. I haven’t been really hungry for a couple of days.”

Either that’s because he’s sick or because he hasn’t had anything resembling a real meal in so long that his body has forgotten how to be hungry. Neither possibility is particularly comforting to Dean. 

Dean sits down on the bed next to him and opens the first aid kit. “Well, you should eat something anyway when Sam gets back.”

“Yeah, okay,” he says absently, nodding, looking at Dean askance. “You’re not going to grill me?”

“I was kind of hoping you’d just come out and tell me.” Dean calmly cups Ben’s chin and turns his face towards the light. He’s determined to keep his cool even if he really does want to tie Ben to a chair and start demanding name, rank, and serial number. But Ben is a kid that needs to be finessed; yell and shout at him, and he shuts down, hides in his room for hours sulking and playing video games. Dean had learned that the hard way. “Won’t do any good to hunt down me and Sam and then not tell us what’s going on.”

The kid looks away, eyes going distant, and doesn’t say anything else while Dean smears the ointment over the rough scratches on his cheek. Outside, the rain begins to pick up again, the light drumming on the roof growing into a pounding roar, and thunder rumbles in the distance, still a few miles out. Dean finishes with his cheek, considers the split lip for a moment before deciding against putting anything on it. Anti-bacterial ointment tastes like ass, and besides, the lip doesn’t look as raw as Ben’s cheeks.

“How’d you get these, anyway?” Dean says, recapping the ointment.

“I fell,” Ben replies.

Dean eyes him thoughtfully. Maybe finessing him isn’t going to work this time, maybe he will actually have to get insistent and start demanding answers, because that was a flat out lie. 

But then Ben sighs with the longsuffering of a put upon teenager, like Dean is being wildly unreasonable about wanting to know how he found him by _dreaming about the future_.

“I started having the dreams back at the beginning of February,” he says. His voice is flat and detached, bare of any emotion, like he’s reciting a grocery list. “They were just random flashes of things, and none of it made any sense. After a while, all I did at night was dream and then spend the next day having déjà vu all day long. It took me a little while to get that I was dreaming about the future. Then Mom disappeared and....”

He shrugs, and that’s that. He lapses back into silence. He hasn’t said anything about forgetting Dean; hell, maybe he didn’t notice. But for right now, Dean is okay with that. He doesn’t have a good defense for wiping their memories, and there are plenty more worrying things to deal with. He’ll be happy to deal with the fallout over that later.

Dean stares at Ben hard for a minute. He knows a difficult witness when he sees one, and right now, Ben fits the profile perfectly. 

He closes the first aid kit and sets it aside, tries to keep his movements casual so as not to spook Ben. “Before the dreams started, did anything happen to you?” 

Ben shrugs, eyes downcast as he fiddles with the hem of the bedspread. “Nothing. I just started having the dreams.”

“You sure? Strange noises in the house, cold spots, lights flickering, seeing things out of the corner of your eye?”

“No.”

“What about any new people in your life?”

Ben shakes his head.

“A new kid at school, or some new friend your mom made? Someone she was dating?” Jealousy flares at the last one, even though erasing your girlfriend’s memories pretty much nullified any claim you ever had on her.

“You mean something evil pretending to be a person? No, Dean. Nothing.” Ben’s voice goes sharp and impatient. Yeah, there’s the emotion, cool as a cucumber to defensive in about point six seconds. “No new people, no creepy kids, no one with black eyes. The only weird thing that happened was that I started having freaky dreams. That’s all there was. I swear. I don’t know what’s going on. That’s why I came looking for you.”

Ben is lying. Maybe not about everything, but he’s definitely lying about something. He’s a kid who keeps things to himself, all smiles and chatter even when he’s got something on his mind – he’s a lot like Dean in that way – but what Ben is not is a good liar. He can keep something to himself only if he doesn’t have to talk about it. And here he is all worked up, full on shaking now and not just with the chills, spewing lies with all the skill of a bad politician. Dean’s first instinct is to lean on him, to make him tell the truth, damn it, because something did happen, something that made Lisa disappear and Ben go psychic, and the thought is like ice water down Dean’s back.

Dean runs a hand over his face, takes a deep breath.

“Okay. I believe you.” His turn to lie, and he knows he’s doing a damn sight better at it than Ben. “So how long have you been looking for me?”

Ben calms a little, but he’s still not making eye contact. “A few weeks. Not long. Just since I left Aunt Sarah’s.”

“You were staying with Sarah and Bill?” Dean didn’t have that great of an opinion of Lisa’s sister and brother-in-law to begin with, and now that Ben slipped their watch, there’s little chance of that opinion ever improving.

“Yeah,” Ben mumbles. “Stayed with her for a couple of days after Mom disappeared.”

“Where were you when your mom disappeared?”

Ben explains how he was at home, watching a movie on TV. He tried calling Lisa once he realized how late she was, but she didn’t answer. He tried a few more times for the next hour until finally someone with the title Detective picked up.

“They sent a police car to pick me up and asked me a bunch of questions. Then I ended up sleeping on a couch at the police station until Bill showed up to get me at three in the morning.”

Dean asks a few more questions about what Ben knows about Lisa’s disappearance, which is nothing more than he had already told him, and then goes back to the original question.

“So you stayed with Sarah and Bill for a couple of days. Why did you leave?”

Ben doesn’t reply. 

“Ben?”

“Can’t I just get some sleep? I’m really tired and my chest hurts.”

Flat out avoidance, now, and that can’t be good. But Dean feels himself softening, because yeah, the kid is sick as a dog, and Dean had done his time living hand to mouth with nothing more than the clothes on his back and a few dollars in his pocket, so he knows what the kid has gone through. Dean is going to give Ben a pass tonight, but tomorrow, short of coughing up a lung or falling into a coma, he will be fessing up.

“Ben, look at me.” 

Ben does it reluctantly, but he looks up. 

“If there is anything dangerous on your tail, you better tell me now. I will not be happy if I have to deal with a surprise monster.”

“If there is, I don’t know about it.” Ben maintains eye contact, doesn’t give any avoidance signals. Not a lie, then. “I promise.” 

Dean nods, squeezes his shoulder affectionately as he stands. “Yeah, okay. Get some sleep.”

Dean turns off the lamp by the bed as Ben shifts and shimmies down under the ugly pastel bedspread. The change in altitude must shift something, because as soon as Ben’s head hits the pillow, he starts up that painful, wet coughing.

Dean brings him the box of tissues and the miniature trashcan from the bathroom, and puts the first on the table between the beds and the other on the floor. Ben hacks for a few minutes, though he doesn’t manage to bring anything up, then puts his back to Dean and burrows down into the blankets.

Then he’s out in about three seconds, dead to the world, his breathing labored and wheezy, but regular.

Dean stuffs the first aid kit back into the weapons duffle where he had stashed it when unloading the car, that knot of fear cozying up with the other knot that moved in weeks ago when he realized Sam was coughing up blood. He stands there for a while, staring into the open bag, considering the usual assortment of weaponry and wondering how he should be arming himself. 

When he had lived with Lisa and Ben, he had laid devil’s traps everywhere, salted every entrance he could, and slept with a sawed off and a bottle of holy water under the bed, but only because Lisa wouldn’t let him sleep with anything under his pillow. Now, he isn’t sure what weapons to take out - salt, holy water, gun, iron knife, silver knife, demon killing knife, angel blade, all of the above? Demons had been the biggest concern back then, but now? It had to be something with enough kick to pluck Lisa out of thin air and cause Ben to remember and have dreams of the future, to set him running.

Frustrated by the whole damned situation, Dean takes out the angel blade, pretty sure that it would take out any evil fucker with half a mind to come stumbling through that door during a heavy Florida downpour and sets the duffle in the corner.

Then his eyes fall on Ben’s backpack. His pang of conscience lasts all of a split second before he’s got it in his hands. The dirty clothes Ben had shoved in come out first. Underneath he finds a couple more dirty t-shirts, one of those fleece blankets covered with the Colts logo, damp and filthy and probably swiped from Sarah and Bill’s since Ben isn’t much of a football fan. There is also an empty water bottle, no label and dented from repeated use, a couple of peanut bags, also empty and vaguely greasy, and buried at the bottom, a paperback.

A lead weight settles in his stomach. The dimensions are familiar enough that he knows what it is even before he checks out the title on the spine, sees the god-awful cover art. 

A _Supernatural_ book. The back cover is ripped off, but a quick glance at a page opened at random tells him that it’s the one about the changelings, and now there’s this prickle of embarrassment, because, God, he had made so many inappropriate jokes about his hook up with Lisa, the one about Pokey coming immediately to mind. Besides that, he had a lot of inappropriate thoughts about Lisa, the kinds of things Ben will always be too young to hear about his own mother, because in Dean’s experience, Chuck’s books were accurate down to the most minute embarrassing detail. Not to mention what he had thought when he had first seen Ben, and of course, what he felt in those moments after Lisa told him that, no, Ben was not his son...

Dean drops the book back into the backpack, throws away the wrappers and the water bottle, considers digging out the book again and lighting it up, decides against it since the damage is probably already done, and shoves everything else back in the backpack.

He moves on to the front pocket, finds a toothbrush and toothpaste along with Lisa’s ATM card and a couple of stubs for bus tickets. The first one dates back to almost a month ago, Cicero to Pittsburg, and the other back to two weeks ago, Washington to Charlotte. The one in between must have been lost. Underneath those, shoved down behind a dead iPod and a tangled set of earphones, there is a set of printouts, mutilated at the corners and dirty in the creases of the folds.

When Dean unfolds them, a picture flutters out. 

He picks it up, flips it over, expecting a picture of Lisa and Ben, but it’s a picture of all three of them, from an afternoon early on after he had thought Sammy lost, the first time Lisa had lured him into interacting with anyone other than the two of them. He remembers that day, the barbeque at her sister Sarah’s ridiculously large house in the meticulously maintained backyard, her husband Bill grilling burgers, a bunch of kids running around, screaming, Sarah chattering incessantly with the baby strapped against her chest in one of those hippy baby slings, the sun shining, birds singing, the smell of freshly mown grass, Ben’s grin at seeing Dean so astonished by his series of bulls eyes on the dart board in the garage, and Lisa giving him a look like, “See? Life is still happening.”

It had been the first time he had believed even just a little that he could actually keep going without Sam.

“Shit,” he mutters. “Shit.”

He hastily puts it all back where he found it, shoving it all back in the front pocket in a panic. The picture goes in with the ATM card and bus stubs, the dead iPod and the earphones, but as he’s about to tuck the folded printouts in, he decides to look anyway, just in case.

“Son of a bitch,” he mutters.

Ben has done a pretty thorough job of researching and putting together everything you’d need to know to protect yourself from demons – a list of ways to identify a demon, a basic exorcism, directions on how to bless holy water, a couple of Devil’s traps. It’s all simple but effective, easy enough for a kid Ben’s age to handle, if properly motivated.

And he’d bet real money that Ben had been properly motivated.

“Damn it, Ben,” he says and pulls a canister of rock salt out of the weapons duffle.

He puts a line of salt down along the windows and the door, grabs a shot gun, a couple of salt rounds, and a flask of holy water. He keeps the angel blade because there is no such thing as overkill in their line of work and takes a position at the table, facing the door, weapons close at hand, and Sam’s laptop booting up in front of him.

If Ben isn’t going to give him answers, Dean is sure as hell going to get them anyway.

* * *

The rain hasn’t let up at all when Sam finally makes it back to the motel. He dashes from the shelter of the Impala to the overhang of the walkway, huge droplets of rain pelting him all the way. He’s soaked from running to and from the car; the bottoms of his jeans are drenched, and cold water trickles along his hairline and down the side of his face. A gust of wind blows rain at him sideways, pelting his entire right side as he keys open the door to the motel room. He elbows the door open so he doesn’t drop any of his shopping bags, and his boots crunch in a line of rock salt just inside the threshold.

Sam really isn’t surprised.

He sets the bags on the table – Chinese takeout, orange juice, beer, and bottled water, half the cold and flu aisle of the closest drug store – and shrugs out of his wet coat. Ben is crashed out on the furthest bed, only the top of his head showing beneath the comforter, and Dean is in front of the laptop, face hard, the angel blade and a shot gun at his right hand. 

Sam isn’t surprised by that, either.

Sam hangs his wet jacket on the back of a chair. “Demons, ghosts, or worse?” 

“Demons.” Dean slides a few creased and mangled printouts across the table. “I found these in his backpack.” 

Sam wipes away the water dripping down the side of his face with one sleeve and picks them up. “You went snooping.”

“He found us by having dreams about the future,” Dean snaps, “so, yes, I went snooping.”

Sam flips through them, impressed by how well Ben has done at choosing his information. Ninety-five percent of the demon related stuff on the internet is useless, but Ben has selected the most accurate, the most useful for his purposes. “He did a good job on research.”

“I’m glad you’d give him an A, professor. Look.” Dean turns the laptop around. Lisa and Ben are grinning out of a picture, Ben in a baseball jersey, Lisa in a white tank top, a red clay baseball field behind them. Below the picture are their stats, descriptions, and the last date they were seen, and above, MISSING is printed out in heavy block letters

“Lisa went missing almost five weeks ago. She left the yoga studio after her last class at 8, and at 8:27, her car was found on the side of the road, door open, engine running, no one in sight. Her purse was still in the passenger seat and nothing was missing. She was just gone, like Ben said. The guy who called it in said that he thought he saw people near her car, but when he pulled up closer, no one was there.”

“And Ben?” 

“He’s been missing for a few days less. The police released him into Lisa’s sister’s custody, and she took him back to Cicero-“

Ben coughs and shifts, mumbling incoherently in his sleep. Dean looks in his direction on high alert. When Ben seems to settle again, Dean brings his attention back to the laptop, to Sam, but not really. The most of it stays on Ben, his eyes darting towards the bed every couple of seconds, his body unconsciously turned in that direction.

Dean rubs a hand over his face. “Where was I?” 

“Cicero.”

“Right.” Dean pulls the laptop back around. “Ben was with her for three days, when Lisa’s sister came home after dropping her daughter at the sitters, Ben was missing and her husband Bill was dead on the living room floor.”

Dean doesn’t say anything else. Sam pulls a beer from the carton, pops the cap, sets it in front of Dean. He keeps one for himself, stashes the rest in the mini-fridge, along with Ben’s orange juice and the six pack of bottled water. He unpacks the take out, sets Dean’s Mongolian beef and a plastic fork out on the table, leaves Ben’s egg drop soup and eggrolls in the bag until he wakes up. He washes his hands in the cotton candy pink sink, dries some of the wet off his skin and out of his hair with a hand towel, goes back to the table where Dean is still sitting vigil, watching Ben sleep.

He sits down with his own cashew chicken, careful not to disrupt Dean’s line of sight, and waits until Dean spits out the self-recrimination Sam knows is building up.  
He gets about halfway through his meal before Dean speaks.  
“Go on,” Dean says. “Say it. You know you want to.”

Sam looks up, fork poised over his food. “Say what?” 

“Say I told you so. Say I should have never had Cas erase their memories.”

Sam wants to, he really, really does, but the satisfaction would be temporary, and it wouldn’t do Dean any good. Besides, Sam’s equally at fault for not making Dean undo it the moment he found out. “Would it make you feel better if I did?”

“I don’t know.” Dean runs a hand over his face wearily. “How the hell does he even remember me? He told me nothing happened to set it off.”

“I don’t know. Maybe Ben scratched at the wall Cas put up?” 

“Maybe. But that doesn’t explain the dreams.” Dean aims one finger at him. “And speaking of, don’t bring up Yellow Eyes again.”

Sam holds up his hands in surrender. “Hey, if we can rule that out...”

“We can. Let it go.”

“Dean, if this were any other case-“

“It’s not any other case. It’s Ben and Lisa.”

“I know.” Sam knows that using reason here isn’t going to work; any chances of convincing Dean to be reasonable about them had been lost two years ago when Lisa almost died. But hope springs eternal. “And we’re going to figure this out, but it’s not going to do Ben any good to ignore all the possibilities just because they scare you.”

“And the first possibility you latch onto is Yellow Eyes?”

Sam shrugs, at a loss. “I don’t know, Dean. Considering the circumstances, it seems like it might be a possibility. But like you said, one thing at a time, right? Let’s get him back on his feet-” Ben shifts in his sleep again, the change of position causing more of those wet, churning coughs, but he doesn’t wake. “-and pour a bottle of cough syrup down his throat. You know, I’m starting to think he might be right about the pneumonia.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” Dean shoots a worried look at Ben. “If he’s not better in the morning, I’ll take him to a -”

“Get out!”

They both start at the shout; Dean is out of his chair and moving to Ben’s side in a flash, and Sam gets to his feet, grabs the angel blade reflexively before he realizes that Ben is just having a nightmare.

“Getoutgetoutgetoutgetout,” Ben is saying in a long, uninterrupted litany, 

“Ben!” Dean gives Ben’s shoulder a shake; Ben comes up on one elbow, lashing out wildly with a fist. 

Dean catches it easily, holding his arm. “Ben! Wake up!”

“Dean?” Ben’s eyes are open, but he’s not really awake. He’s panting shallowly in fear.

“Yeah, it’s me.” Dean tugs at Ben’s wrist, coaxes Ben into swinging his legs around and sitting on the edge of the bed. “Come on. Sit up.” 

Ben grabs a fistful of Dean’s shirt, eyes wild, and twists it in his fist. “There’s someone in the house.”

“What house?”

“Our house in Cicero. Can’t you hear him walking around?”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.” Ben sounds terrified and desperate. “Dean, he’s in our house.”

“There’s no one in the house, Ben.” Dean’s voice is gentle. “You were dreaming, kiddo.”

Ben shakes his head sloppily, eyes still glazed with sleep. “Not just a dream. They aren’t ever just dreams anymore.”

“Well, that one seems to be. We don’t even live in that house anymore, remember?”

Ben looks at Dean like he’s seeing him for the first time, then looks over at Sam. He blinks blearily, lets go of Dean’s shirt.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, embarrassed.

“S’okay. Come eat something. Sam brought back Chinese.” Dean gets Ben to his feet, steers him around the beds and towards the table. Sam hastily moves the weapons out of the way. “Egg drop soup and eggrolls, right?”

Ben nods as he drops into a chair.

Dean sets him up with the soup and eggrolls, makes sure there’s an opened bottle of orange juice at his elbow. Ben drinks the soup directly from the plastic container, gaze fixed on the pastel blue drapes with a hundred yard stare. He doesn’t touch the eggrolls.

“You get anything that will put him out?” Dean asks in a low voice.

Sam digs the Nyquil out of the drug store bag, the tried and true cold remedy of John Winchester, and when Ben puts down the soup half-finished, Dean feeds him more Ibuprofen and the Nyquil, makes him finish a bottle of orange juice.

“Dude, I’ve got it,” Ben snaps impatiently, jerking away from Dean’s hand at his shoulder when he is trying to herd him back to bed. 

Dean holds up his hands in defeat, muttering an insincere sorry. He hovers as Ben gets settled again, facing away from them with the blankets pulled up around his ears, then hovers a little longer, like he’s making sure Ben really is all right.

Sam can barely suppress a smile. He had spent his entire childhood getting mollycoddled by Dean – _did you brush your teeth, tell me where it hurts, I’ll rip his lungs out_ \- and Dean’s fussy caretaking is sort of adorably hilarious when you aren’t bearing the brunt of it. Sam can’t say he’s not a little relieved, too, especially now that Dean has found out that he has been coughing up blood. Dean’s mother henning can be overbearing, and it’s nice to let someone else be the focus for a change. 

It is a heavy burden, being the focus of Dean’s world, and if Sam can keep Dean from going all _Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind_ on Ben again, he would be happy to share it.

After he says yes, Ben doesn’t remember right away.

He doesn’t remember firing the shotgun at a demon or Dean carrying his bleeding mother out of the warehouse in his arms. He doesn’t remember Dean giving him some BS reason why he had to leave them or Dean shoving him against the wall in the middle of the night (there had been something wrong with Dean that night, he could see it, just a flash of something horrible hidden just beneath the surface of his skin). He doesn’t remember the day Sam came back and Dean left; he doesn’t remember the night Dean showed up and sat down to dinner and didn’t leave for a year; he doesn’t remember the changelings or Dean at his eighth birthday party or how cool Dean was or how if he had to choose somebody to be his dad (because he didn’t have one, and that was okay, his mom was pretty bitchin’, way cooler than other moms, and he didn’t really need anyone else), it would totally be Dean.

He doesn’t remember, but he does know he has forgotten _something_.

It starts as a nagging feeling, like he didn’t do a homework assignment or lock the front door on his way to school. He spends a few minutes the first morning after the dream tracing his steps back through the house, hoping he would see whatever he feels like he forgot. But he has to leave the house _right now_ or he’ll be late to school. Late to first period even once means the end of his freedom to ride his bike to school instead of taking the bus or mom driving him like he’s still a little kid, so he leaves, the feeling of forgetting unsatisfied.

The feeling lingers, following through that first day and into the next, always dragging at him, never letting up, like an itch that needs scratching, but so far down, so deep under his skin, that he can’t get to it, can’t make it stop. 

He does a lot of back tracking, double and triple checking that the lock on his locker is secure, going back up to his room before he goes to school to make sure he didn’t leave anything, checking homework assignments and tests in his agenda against his teachers’ web pages. He is late to class a couple of times because he has to double back to his last class to make sure he didn’t leave anything behind, and he comes very close to getting detention for asking for a pass to the bathroom only to spend the next fifteen minutes retracing his steps through the school looking for that something he can never seem to find.

The unrelenting feeling of forgetting swells, get fat and heavy, evolves into something else. He has a hard time focusing in class, and video games and TV can’t seem to keep his attention. His friends ask him what’s wrong, why he’s being so weird, why he doesn’t want to hang out in the afternoons anymore. He wakes at night, right out of a dead sleep, heart racing and tears streaming down his face, sad in a way he doesn’t understand. A few times he even gets out of bed to wander the house silently, expecting to find the missing thing just around the corner, but only finding dark corners and the shadows of the trees splashed on the walls.

His mom catches him one evening standing at the kitchen sink while he’s supposed to be loading the dishwasher, staring at the bulletin board on the counter, not quite able to figure out what’s wrong with it. There are pictures of him and his mom pinned to it, along with grocery lists and appointment cards for the dentist, but there are some that he can’t seem to focus on, that his eyes seem to skitter over when he tries to look at them. And that makes no sense, none at all, shouldn’t even be possible.

“Something wrong?” his mom asks, stroking his hair, an expression of concern on her face. “You’ve seemed distracted lately.”

Ben shrugs, and he leans into her touch, eager for the comfort even if he doesn’t understand why he needs it. “Dunno. Just school I guess.”

“Is that all? Because if this is about Matt...?”

Another shrug. What happened to Matt had been awful, the home invasion terrifying, but it’s not that, though sometimes he thinks the two might be connected. “No, it’s not about Matt. It’s just... stuff.”

She nods, presses a kiss to the side of his head. “Okay. Well, you know I’m here if you need to talk about stuff, right? No matter what it is?”

Ben nods and goes back to the dishes, relieved she hasn’t pressed it yet, though given time, she will. And how can he talk to her about it? How can he explain that his memories don’t seem right anymore, some of them seem weirdly fuzzy and nonsensical, the little details not fitting together in the right way? 

Like, okay, he remembers the sickening snap of Matt’s neck, the meaty thud of his body hitting the floor, he remembers his mom’s screams and running for her cell phone, that’s all there, that’s all correct. But who did he call? And what happened then? The car accident? Did he and his mom get away, get into the car and drive? He can’t remember, and he can’t remember the accident, yet he remembers being in the hospital after the car accident. 

And then there’s the thing back in Cicero, getting trapped in some kind of fire in a half built house when he was eight, playing with some neighborhood kids in places they weren’t supposed to be. He can’t remember how they got out. He remembers crawling through a broken window, but who broke it? It was way above their heads. And the kids, why were there so many of them? Some of them were in their pajamas, and he didn’t even know half of them. 

It’s all he can do to keep himself functioning normally, to not scare his mother, to make sure she thinks that everything is okay, that her kid isn’t losing his mind right in front of her eyes. 

Because that’s what it feels like sometimes, like he’s going crazy. 

Then one Saturday afternoon while his mom is teaching afternoon classes at the studio, he gets half the hall closet unpacked before he realizes what he’s doing, dragging out winter coats and umbrellas and the small vacuum cleaner his mom uses on the foyer and stairs. He’s got the step ladder halfway out when the leg catches on something. A golf bag he doesn’t recognize comes toppling out, the clubs spilling out on the tiles with a clatter.

Ben jumps back, his heart fluttering in his chest. Then he’s confused. He’s been in and out of the closet a hundred times this winter, and he’s never noticed the bag before. They must have belonged to Matt is the first thing he thinks, but that is yet another thing that sits wrong; Matt hadn’t liked golf, said it was boring, had thought he and mom were insane for getting up at the crack of dawn to drag their golf bags around in the summer heat and the blustery winter cold. They weren’t his or his mom’s either; they kept theirs in the garage. Who then? Who did they belong to? 

That itch that needs scratching seems so overwhelming suddenly, like his answer is on the tip of his tongue- 

He hastily repacks the closet, resisting the urge to sling it all back in into one big pile. Then he’s out the door like a shot wearing only a sweat shirt, riding his bike past where he’s allowed to go, along unfamiliar streets, through busy intersections and neighborhoods he has never been through before, pushing himself until the urge to find that thing he has lost is pushed away by the exertion of riding as far and as fast as he can. By the time he makes it back to his own neighborhood, the shadows are growing long and the cold is starting to bite. The sweat shirt isn’t enough against the sharp February wind now that he isn’t riding as hard as he can, but he doesn’t want to go home, doesn’t want to be in that house alone where he can feel something missing, some huge thing that he can’t seem to find no matter where or how hard he looks.

Instead he rides over to his friend Logan’s, hoping to be distracted until curfew.

Logan gives Ben a knowing grin when he appears in his doorway, sent up by Logan’s mom. “Finally, here to play _Halo 4_ , huh?” 

Ben shrugs, not correcting Logan’s assumptions. “Yeah. My mom’s at work, so...” 

He usually claims he’s not allowed to play Halo when Logan extends an invitation. It’s more or less true, since his mom refuses to buy him a gaming system any larger than the front pocket of his backpack and therefore by default refuses to let him play Halo. But mostly he just doesn’t want to wade into the horror show that is Logan’s room. Ben likes Logan, he really does, and much to Ben’s dismay, Logan has a bitchin’ set up with an XboX, a PSP, and his own TV, but Logan is also a total slob, repulsively so even by teenage boy standards.

“Well, I guess this dumbass history homework can wait till tomorrow.” 

Logan throws down his pen and literally has to climb over a pile of dirty clothes to get to the XboX. His floor is barely visible; there are clothes and comics and candy wrappers and shoes and dirty dishes, even a random lacrosse stick and a half assembled Lego Death Star, piled here and there around the room.

“It’s such a badass game. I can’t believe it has taken you this long to come play it.” Logan reaches into a pile of random junk and pulls out a knotted set of controllers. “Ugh. Tangled. Give me a minute here.”

He plops on the floor, half on top of a pair of dirty sneakers which he shoves out of the way without looking. He starts picking at the cords, then looks up at Ben, still lingering in the doorway, unable to work up the nerve to wade in.

“Dude, just kick stuff out of the way.” 

Ben takes that literally and starts moving things with the side of his foot, kicking random bits of clothing and several empty food wrappers and an open and empty DVD case for _Batman Begins_ out of the way. He clears a couple of books and several pieces of dirty clothes away from a spot near the bed and settles there, feeling like he has made a large enough perimeter, except for a dirty gym t-shirt that is just a little too close to him for comfort.

He pulls his hand inside his sleeve and pushes it further away from him, and as he does so, he unearths a book. Ben almost pushes it away, too, but something about it catches his attention. It has a cheesy horror novel cover: a suburban house with birthday balloons tied to the mailbox, a full moon in the night sky, and a creepy kid with empty eye sockets standing at one of the windows. Two guys with stupidly long hair (one with no shirt – for real?) stand on the front lawn, staring up at the house. But it’s the car parked on the street that catches his eye, a black muscle car with Ohio plates, familiar in a way Ben can’t quite name, sleek and gleaming in the moonlight...

That feeling of loss suddenly howls back to life.

“What’s this?” He flips it over, hoping for a blurb, but the back cover has been ripped off.

Logan looks up from the cords. “Oh, that’s one of my sister’s books. She has huge stacks of them all over her room and stays up all night writing crappy fanfic about them.”

“What are they about?” The title of the book is _The Kids are Alright_ , and he notices other details, like the blow torch in the half naked guy’s hands and a woman hiding on the side of the house, hand resting on a knife at her side.

“It’s this whole series about these brothers who travel around the country, like, hunting ghosts and demons and things. One of them has psychic abilities, and there’s this demon with yellow eyes-”

There is an unholy screech from the hallway. “Is that one of my _Supernatural_ books?”

Both boys start, heads snapping around. Logan’s sister is standing in the doorway, hands on her hips, glaring daggers at her brother. She’s a tenth grader with purple hair and black nail polish, who always seems to be rolling her eyes and sighing contemptuously. Ben doesn’t pay a lot of attention to her, especially since she usually lurks in her room playing crappy pop punk music most of the time. Today, she is wearing a Fall Out Boy t-shirt, which is usually a deal breaker for Ben, but it’s kind of tight, stretching out the band name across her chest in interesting ways, and he’s finding it easier than usual to notice her. 

Logan groans. “Abby, go away.”

She comes stomping into the room, bravely kicking aside the lacrosse stick and an empty Big Gulp cup with a bare foot, and snatches the book out of Ben’s hand. Ben finds he’s okay with that, since that gives him a new angle on the stretched out Fall Out Boy logo.

“It is one of my _Supernatural_ books!” Abby turns to her brother, bright red with rage. “Logan, you dick, you went in my room!”

“So? You’re in my room right now!” Logan shouts, and they are off, yelling insults at each other, Logan from his spot on the floor with the controller cords tangled in his lap, and Abby looming over him, waving the book around as she shouts.

Ben keeps his eyes on the book; that deep down itch is driving him crazy, the feeling of something on the tip of his tongue seems to be smothering him. And the car, the car, he can almost see it under a tarp and parked in a garage. Their garage. He can hear the rumble of the engine and smell the leather and upholstery scent of the interior. He had loved that car, loved riding in it with the windows down and music blaring on the radio, even if the army guy stuck in the ashtray always poked him in the arm.

It was so close, that missing thing, there, just there, and if he could just look at the book a little more, just read a few pages-

The lies are coming out of his mouth before he really thinks about it.

“Hey! It’s not his fault.” Both Abby and Logan look over at him with similar expressions of surprise, like they didn’t realize he was still there. “I was asking Logan if he ever heard of them, and he said that you had some and that he would sneak one out. You know, for me to read.” He gives her a hopeful smile. “I heard they were really good.”

Logan makes a ‘what the hell?’ gesture at him, but Abby gets this crazed light in her eyes , the same one he sees in the eyes of half the girls at school anytime someone mentions Sherlock or Doctor Who in their presence.

Abby scoffs. “Pretty good?” His lukewarm praise seems to offend her. “They are excellent and transcendent.”

Ben has no idea what transcendent means, he’ll have to look it up later, but he gets the gist. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” And she proceeds to describe the entire premise of the books to him in excruciating detail, up to and including details about Sam’s soulful eyes and Dean’s tough exterior and some other weirdly obsessive stuff, so mostly he just zones it out, nodding along and making noises of interest when it seems appropriate while Logan untangles the cords and watches Ben suspiciously out of the corner of his eye.

“They sound really interesting,” he says when it seems like she’s done. “Can I borrow it?”

Now Abby is eyeing him suspiciously. “It’s not the first one.”

“That’s okay.

“It’s not a very good one.”

“That’s okay.”

Abby purses her lips together, considering. 

“Please?” Ben makes sure to give her his best smile, all teeth and sparkling eyes, the smile that makes his mom roll her eyes and tell him that smile stopped working on her years ago.

The smile must work on Abby, though, because she finally shrugs and thrusts the book towards Ben. “Fine, I guess, since Logan has already drooled on it and everything. But be careful with it. The books are collector’s items, and it’s really hard to find them unless you have like a million dollars or a credit card to use on eBay.”

Ben takes it, curls his fingers around the spine and holds it protectively against his chest. “Oh, I’ll totally take care of it. Thanks.”

“No problem,” she says magnanimously. “I’m spreading the gospel of _Supernatural_. It’s the least I can do for the cause.”

Logan sighs in exasperation. “The gospel of _Supernatural?_ The cause? God, Abby, what is wrong with you?”

“Shut up, douche nozzle,” she says, and stomps out of the room.

Logan turns to Ben immediately. “Dude, were you, like, hitting on my sister?”

“What? No.” Not with her taste in music, he wants to say, but he keeps that to himself. “The books just sounded, you know, cool.”

Logan considers him with the same expression as his sister, like he’s not quite sure that Ben is being straight with him, but after a moment he seems to decide that Ben is on the up and up and shrugs. 

“Yeah, they are actually pretty cool. I’ve been sneaking them out of her room and reading them for a while now. I haven’t read that one yet, though.” He tosses an untangled controller in Ben’s general direction. “Here.”

Ben picks up the controller in his free hand, flexes his fingers around the book in his other. “You know, it’s kinda late, and I didn’t clean the kitchen like I was supposed to.” The last part is not actually a lie. He drops the controller and gets to his feet. “I should go.”

He hears Logan saying something or another, looking confused, but Ben is out the door and down the stairs without even pretending he’s registering what Logan is saying. He rides home, only one hand on the handle bar, the cold wind stinging his eyes, the book still clutched to his chest. He parks his bike in the garage (where the black car used to sit, there, right there) and hurries inside. He throws himself down on the couch, forgetting that his mom really is expecting him to clean the kitchen, and begins to read.

Five pages in and the brothers are arriving in Cicero, Indiana. 

Ten pages in and the older brother, Dean, is walking into a kid’s birthday party. 

Fifteen pages in, and he’s starting to have this feeling of really intense déjà vu, like he’s read this story before, because the kid’s name is Ben and the mother’s name is Lisa. Ben is turning eight. There’s a bouncy castle, and an AC/DC CD, and the older brother starts talking to the kid-

The itch stops itching suddenly. His brain goes still, real quiet, and something inside him shifts, literally and physically shifts-

The world slides sideways, and a spike of pain unlike anything he has ever felt lances through his skull, pierces the soft brain matter behind his eyes, lights up his synapses with white fire; reality as he understands it uncoils and rearranges itself, his memories shifting back into their original position, flooding back into his reach in one massive surge.

Ben comes to a minute later, an hour later, he has no idea, still lying on the couch and dragging in these deep, ragged breaths, his whole body tensed and sweaty. The house is silent except for the hum of the refrigerator, and out on the street, a car passes by.

The book slides off his chest and falls to the floor as he gets to his feet, body heavy and sluggish like he’s just run a marathon or something. He stumbles into the kitchen, finds the bulletin board in its usual place with appointment cards and grocery lists and pictures of him and his mom tacked all over it. But there are others there, too, partially hidden by coupons and business cards for the exterminator and lawn care service tacked over them, pictures of him and his mom and-

Dean.

He remembers Dean and the changelings and the Impala parked in the garage; he remembers talking Dean into playing golf and learning to change the oil on a car and going to all the boy movies his mom never wanted to see; he remembers the sick feeling of betrayal when he realized that Dean wasn’t really coming back and his mom crying in the bathroom when she didn’t think Ben could hear her and how completely uninteresting Matt had seemed because he wasn’t Dean; he remembers the numbing horror of his mother stabbing herself in the side and the stranger in the trench coat saying, _don’t be afraid_ , and then the weird blankness of two years of not remembering Dean. 

He remembers it all.

Then the dreams start.


	3. Chapter 3

Ben wakes up coughing.

He comes up off the bed, his whole body convulsing. It sounds awful and feels worse, a wet churning sound in his lungs accompanied by a deep ache in his chest and back. His throat feels scraped raw and he can’t seem to get in enough air. He sits up in a panic, kicking away the blankets and gripping the edge of the bed for dear life.

“Ben?” Dean says from the other bed, his voice rough with sleep. He leans up on his elbow and rubs his eyes. On the other side of the bed, Sam is starting to stir. “You all right?”

Ben shakes his head and stumbles to his feet. A huge slimy mass has come up, and he careens off the door frame hard in his haste to get into the bathroom. He spits a horrifying amount of gunk into the sink, far more than he had brought up yesterday, multi-colored and threaded with blood. 

“That doesn’t sound good, Dean,” he hears Sam say. 

Dean mumbles something to Sam then calls out, “Ben? Talk to me, man.”

“I’m coughing up blood.” But that’s not all. He can also feel the fluid pooling in his lungs as his body fights the bacteria hiding between the cells of his alveoli, _streptococcus pneumoniae_ , to be exact, and in the mirror, once he puts a hand over his chest so he doesn’t have to squint against the light shining out, he can see the fever as a haze around his body, emanating from him like heat coming up off the pavement in the summer. He doesn’t know how he sees what he sees or knows what he knows, and he’s not sure what freaks him out more, being this sick or diagnosing what’s wrong with him down to the name of the bacteria in his lungs. “I think I’m really sick.”

Dean suddenly appears in the mirror, leaning over his shoulder to look in the sink.

“Gross.” His hair is sticking up all over the place, a red imprint of the pillow case creases his cheek, and several long, deep cuts slice across his chest, seeping blood into his t-shirt. “Looks like you have the plague.”

Ben snaps his eyes shut, sure he’s seeing things, because no, that can’t be real. But when he opens his eyes, the slashes down Dean’s chest are still there, bleeding, but now there’s a hole like a stab wound over Dean’s heart, not bleeding but inflamed, and a half-healed gouge in his shoulder that Ben can see straight through.

Ben stares at Dean, horrified. Dean pulls him around by his shoulder to feel his head for fever, and it’s even worse, looking at him directly. The wounds are everywhere, all over him, some small, some large, some inflamed or seeping blood, some healed over with shiny, pink scar tissue: huge claw marks slash his stomach and chest, black blood seeps from stab wound on Dean’s side, a flap of torn flesh hangs off his arm about two inches from Ben’s face, revealing the muscle underneath, a circle of yellow and green bruises rings his throat, a mound of shiny scar tissue in the shape of hand glows strangely on his bicep....

He looks like he’s been in several fights, run through with a sword a few times, then chewed on by some kind of monster, but at the same time, the wounds aren’t there at all, they are just misty images overlaying his body like a demon’s face over the person it’s possessing. Dean is, in reality, completely fine.

“Still with the fever.” Dean eyes him, considering. A cut along his hairline drips phantom blood down the side of his face. He doesn’t seem to notice. “And hey, relax. I was joking about the plague. Your freakishly good immune system will fight this off in no time once we get some antibiotics in you. Come get dressed, and we’ll find you a doctor.”

Ben nods, scared now, really scared.

Dean wanders out again, revealing more phantom slashes and bruises on his back. Ben feels the freak out building, he’s probably going to start hyperventilating or something any minute, but then the coughing starts up again and he has to lean over the sink to bring up more slimy, bloody goo.

He is distracted from losing it for a while by an unpleasant bout of hacking, followed by a lot of spitting and nose-blowing. His chest and back ache dully by the time he’s done, and if this is how it feels to be sick, he plans to never get sick again.

He feels a little calmer but not much better once he finally manages to leave the bathroom, though his body feels weak and lethargic, like he’s dragging it behind him. He makes it as far as the bed before he has to sit, his whole body dropping down like a lead weight.

The room is dim, gray in the morning light that spills around the edge of the curtains. No one has turned on any lamps. Dean is already dressed and lacing up his boots on the other bed, the weak light visible through the hole in his shoulder. Sam is at the table typing away on the laptop, hair tangled and messy, the screen illuminating burns across his cheek and forehead, weird black blisters around his mouth. 

Ben feels that freak out starting to build again. This is the fever, right? Don’t high fevers cause hallucinations? 

“There’s a clinic a couple of miles from here.” The burns along Sam’s arms shift and gleam in the light every time he moves. “They open in about 45 minutes.”

Dean looks at his watch; the hand-shaped burn on his arm burns bright white and that torn flap of skin wiggles as he moves. “We have time to get some coffee, then.” He looks at Ben in concern. “You going to make it, Ben?” 

Ben realizes he probably looks like he’s in total freak out mode, and if he doesn’t want Dean questioning him, he had better get it together. There’s something about the wounds he’s seeing that seem too... true. Too secret. The last thing he wants to do is tell Dean that he knows the hole in his shoulder was made by a meat hook, held by someone who was just _grinning_ as Dean screamed-

He manages a nod and looks away, pushing down his panic. It must be the fever. It has to be. There is no way that what he is seeing is real. And yet he knows, _knows_ , that this is not a hallucination. His fever isn’t high enough for hallucinations, and he doesn’t know how he knows that, either.

He hauls himself to his feet and forces himself across the carpet to his backpack. His clothes are filthy, he doesn’t really want to put them back on, and he’s not quite onto the next thought when he catches sight of the pile of clothing next to the TV. His clothes, folded in a neat stack and clean. Even his shoes look like they have gone through the wash. He pauses, mind gone still and cold.

His stomach drops. “You washed my clothes?”

“Yeah. Last night while you were asleep.” A pause. “You’re welcome.”

Ben ignores Dean’s sarcasm and hastily grabs the backpack. He unzips the front pocket and finds that things have been moved around. His research is gone, and the picture of his mom and him and Dean is tucked down beside his iPod. And right then he remembers that as relieved and grateful as he is to have finally caught up with Dean, as much as he doesn’t want Dean to be mad at him or decide he’s some kind of monster to be put down, he’s also pissed beyond words about the whole erasing his memories thing – and yeah, he knows all about _that_ \- and this? This is too much.

The anger surges up and he turns to Dean. “You looked through my stuff.”

“Yeah, I did.” He’s tucking his wallet into his back pocket; Sam looks up from the computer with a frown. “And I found an exorcism and a devil’s trap, which you’re going to tell me all about after we get as many antibiotics into you as a doctor is willing to give.”

“You had no right to do that.”

“You’re really going to argue with me about this?” Blood suddenly erupts from the wound in Dean’s side, and a huge black patch that spreads out across his t-shirt and down the outside of his leg; all his other wounds seem to fade into the background. “You show up half alive at a gas station five states away from where you should be, talking about how your mom is missing and you’re having dreams about the future, and you expect me not to look through your things?”

“You should have asked.”

“You should have told me about the demons.”

“Dean,” Sam says.

“I haven’t seen one in weeks!”

“What do you mean you haven’t seen one in weeks?”

“Dean!” Sam shouts.

Dean whirls on Sam. “What!”

“Go get coffee.” Then he adds very pointedly, “Please.”

“Sam-“

“Go.”

The two of them stare at each other for a long moment, then Dean huffs, grabs his keys and his jacket, and storms out. The door slams so hard that the windows rattle in their frames. 

Silence settles into the room. Face burning with more than fever, Ben grabs his clothes and retreats to the bathroom, his heart pounding away in his chest, his stomach tied in knots. He didn’t want to fight with Dean or be mad at him or have to think about the fact that Dean wanted to be away from him and his mom so badly that he erased their memories, but at the same time, Dean didn’t get the right to yell at him about these things when he left them practically defenseless, not even knowing that things like demons or monsters existed, let alone who to call when they suddenly appeared.

He throws his clothes down on the toilet lid, tears off the clothes Dean gave him to sleep in, and slings them into the corner. He gets halfway into his own clothes when his anger burns out suddenly, leaving his whole body trembling with fatigue. His arms start shaking and his legs get watery, and he has to sit on the edge of the tub for a minute to catch his breath, t-shirt draped across his lap.

This is not how things are supposed to be going. Things should be easy now, no more worrying to be had, Dean’s helping him, Sam is on board, they should be able to find his mom, and all his problems should be solved. But no, now he’s seeing things, and he feels like he’s dying – seriously, this has to be what dying feels like – and Dean is mad at him, and who knows what Sam thinks and just what is going on? This seems like one long, unending nightmare.

Ben sighs, starts moving again, gets himself totally clothed - jeans, t-shirt, socks - though at some point he starts shivering, and has to pause more than once to hack up more goo.

The lights are on when he comes out. Sam is still on the laptop, hair brushed now, typing away. Ben grabs his shoes and sits on the edge of the bed to put them on, but has to rest again after he gets his foot in the first shoe. His whole body is trembling, and all he wants is to just crawl back into the bed, pull the blanket over his head, and go back to sleep forever. It’s starting to seem like a really good idea.

“You okay?” 

Ben looks up, finds Sam watching him in concern. “No. I feel like crap.”

The chair creaks as Sam gets up. “Yeah. Pneumonia or the flu or whatever you have will do that to you.” He digs in one of the drug store bags; plastic crinkles and pills rattle and then Sam is sitting down across from him on the other bed, a bottle of pills in hand.

“Is this what it always feels like?” 

“What do you mean?” Sam asks, twisting the cap off the ibuprofen. 

Ben can see more of his wounds now and tries not to stare. He has fewer bleeding cuts and gouges than Dean, but more burns, lots of them, some of them healed into twisted mounds of scar tissue, others still raw and bubbling and gooey. He also has a stab wound over his heart that matches Dean’s, partially healed over and inflamed, and beneath that, a particularly horrifying black scar, where it looks like something was ripped out and shoved back in.

“Being sick. Is this what it always feels like?”

Sam gives him a weird look. “Well, yeah.” He spills a few pills into his palm, holds them out to Ben. “When was the last time you were sick?” 

“Never,” he says without thinking, reaching for the pills, his fingertips brushing a scar on Sam’s palm – a real scar, made, Ben knows, by real glass. The memory of something vast and bright and angry claws at the edges of Ben’s mind, like some wounded thing howling its rage into the universe, and he snatches his hand away quickly, heart thumping. 

Sam doesn’t seem to notice. “Never?” he says, twisting the top back on the bottle. He sets it on the table between the beds, his left forearm flaring briefly from the inside out, illuminating the scars on the surface of his skin like red coals in a fire. His eyes flicker briefly to Ben’s arm, where Dean had nicked him the day before, then to his face, to the scrapes he had gotten from the not-girl the day before. “Not even a cold?”

Ben realizes what he said just before he realizes that Sam had noticed that the cut on his arm and the scrapes on his cheek are now half-healed pink lines. He hastily bends his elbow and turns his head self-consciously; he’s not supposed to tell other people about how fast he heals. He wonders if he should keep hiding it from Sam, but Dean didn’t think it was weird when he first found out, and Sam is his brother, so maybe he won’t either.

Ben decides to take the risk. “No, never.” 

“Huh,” Sam says, like he hears that all time. “There’s orange juice in the fridge. Want some?”

Ben blinks, surprised by the change of topic. Dean had asked him a million questions about his lack of illness – not even chicken pox or food poisoning or the flu, not once, not even a sniffle? – and hadn’t been convinced until they all had bad buffalo wings on St. Patrick’s Day, and Ben was the only one in the house who didn’t spend a full 24 hours clinging to a toilet. 

Sam seems completely uninterested, but then, he’s also a lot different than Dean. More flexible and less prickly, although something about that scar on his palm and the black burns around his mouth tell Ben that he wouldn’t want to make Sam mad. 

“Uh, yeah. Thanks.”

Sam fetches a bottle of orange juice from the fridge while Ben jams his foot into the other shoe, ibuprofen clutched in one hand. 

Sam pops the cap and hands it to him. “Here,” he says, and Ben hesitates briefly before taking it. Newly visible phantom blood covers his hand, caked in the lines of his fingers and the vaguely horseshoe shaped scar on his palm, and he has to remind himself that it’s not really there. 

Sam settles on the other bed again, smearing phantom blood all over the bedding as he moves the rumpled bed clothes aside. “So, can I ask a question, Ben?”

“Sure.” Ben pops the pills in his mouth and takes a drink of the orange juice, bright and sweet on his tongue. 

“The printouts Dean found. Were you just researching or did you have to use it?”

Ben wipes the back of his mouth with one arm, considers lying for a brief moment, but decides against it. He’s going to have to tell them about the demon eventually. “I had to use it.”

“Did it work?” Sam asks with more interest than he had shown for Ben’s lack of illness.

Ben nods, his stomach sinking. “Yeah.” 

Sam nods thoughtfully. “You did a good job with the research, but Dean’s right. You really should have mentioned the demons.”

He’s being gentle and nice and that’s great, it’s better than being yelled at by Dean. But he also kind of wants Sam just to shut the hell up. He’s been doing fine by himself, doesn’t need the extra coaching, especially not when he has to look at a patch of bubbling burns on Sam’s shoulder seep blood and yellow pus down the front of his shirt.

Ben drops his eyes and shrugs, swiping his thumb across the beads of condensation dripping down the side of the orange juice bottle. “I really only saw the one. I didn’t think it was a problem anymore.”

“You can’t be sure of that, though. They can look and act just like everyone else when they want to.”

Ben doesn’t argue that, even though for him, that’s not entirely true.

* * *

The urgent care clinic is full of sick people.

The nurse at the receptionist’s window has a chemical imbalance in her brain that’s causing seizures, but she’s taking the wrong medication for it. The nurse standing just behind her using the copy machine has a two day old tattoo on her left shoulder; the itch is driving her crazy, but so far she has resisted the urge to scratch it. The big guy in a red flannel shirt and clunky work boots sitting directly across the waiting room from Ben is having a bad bout of sciatica; the pain is a low, blunt throb in his lower back, but he also has a heart murmur that is going to kill him in a year or so if the liver cirrhosis doesn’t do it first. Nearby, a little blonde girl who looks about as bad as he feels is leaning against her grandmother and clutching a stuffed bear in her arms. She has the flu; a high fever stands out from her in a halo of heat and a black and blue bruise in the shape of a man’s hand lies hidden under her puffy pink jacket. There is also a smattering of smaller ones on her other arm where someone has repeatedly pinched her, and a big black bruise on her lower back which Ben somehow knows was made by a boot. The little girl is trying to think of a way not to let the doctor or her grandmother see them.

Sickened and terrified, Ben looks away, huddling down into Dean’s too large jacket, shivering. He doesn’t know why he’s seeing these things all of the sudden; for a while there it was all dreams of useless images from the future, and now he’s awake and seeing invisible wounds and heart conditions. And he can’t even say anything to these people without either sounding crazy or worse, freaking Dean out. 

But the little girl – he has to say something to someone, right? To the doctor maybe? Didn’t medical professionals have to report abuse?

“Had any surgeries since I last saw you?” Dean asks. He doesn’t seem angry anymore, hasn’t seemed upset at all since he came back to the hotel room from his coffee run to get Ben. He had even made Ben put on his green jacket when he caught sight of Ben shivering in a gust of wind when they left the hotel.

“No.” Ben glances over at the clipboard in Dean’s hand. Except for Ben’s age, sex, and birth date, all of the information on the paperwork is false, including Dean’s name.

“Roger Waters? Like from Pink Floyd?”

“Yeah.” Dean grins. When he does that, Ben can almost not see Dean’s phantom wounds, which is nice, since they are nearly too hard to look at. “If you have to use a fake name, might as well do it with style. Now shut up and enjoy being the kid of a rock star.”

He has also listed Ben’s last name as Waters, and his relationship to Ben as father. There’s this weird fuzzy warmth in his chest that he wish would go away, because this was just a big fat lie on a clinic admittance form to get him into see a doctor, and not actually an acknowledgement of the truth. 

He shoves away his hope and leans his head back against the wall, closing his eyes so he doesn’t have to see anyone’s invisible bruises or falsified medical forms. He must doze off again, because the next thing he knows, Dean is shaking his shoulder.

“Ben. Hey. They’re calling you back.”

Ben manages to get himself on his feet and follows the nurse into the back hallway, Dean trailing behind them. He endures the weighing in and the height measurement – he’s lost thirteen pounds and grown an inch since the last time he checked. She leads him to an exam room, bullies him up onto the examination table, makes him take off the jacket and his hoodie even though he’s freezing, tortures him with the blood pressure cuff, and takes his temperature. 

“One-oh-four,” she says, tossing the cover for the thermometer in the biohazard bin. “You’ve got a scorcher there, don’t you?”

She scribbles something on her clipboard, and leaves them with a promise that the doctor will be in shortly. As soon as she is gone, Ben lets out a sigh of relief; it was hard to look at her with a dead fetus in her womb.

Ben pulls his layers back on and zips up, his conscience heavy. Dean settles in the chair in the corner, legs stretched out in front of him, and closes his eyes.

Ben thinks about the little girl and her bruises, his stomach churning. He had known what was going to happen to his math teacher and had done nothing to stop it; he can’t let something like that happen again. He has to say something. 

Resigned, Ben says, “Dean?”

“Yeah?”

“If you knew something about someone that sounded crazy because there’s no way you should know it, but you knew if you told someone it would save their life, would you tell them?”

“Yeah, Ben. That’s kind of in my job description.” Dean opens his eyes, shoots a suspicious look at Ben. “Why?”

Ben fiddles with the jacket’s zipper, sort of looking at Dean from the corner of his eye. “You know that little girl out in the waiting room?”

Dean sits forward now, on high alert. “What about her?”

“Someone’s abusing her. She has a big bruise in the shape of a hand print on her arm, and a big one on her lower back, like someone kicked her.”

Dean is staring at him hard, and the wound in his side is starting to bleed again, the phantom blood soaking through his shirts and jacket in a large dark patch, a few black drops splattering on the gray linoleum floor before disappearing. “How do you know that?”

Ben gives him a half shrug. “I don’t know. I just looked at her and I knew.”

Dean gets up, paces to the door, trailing invisible blood splatter behind him, then whirls on Ben. “Anyone else you’re getting the 411 on out there?” 

“Nothing I think I could change if I said something. The guy in flannel has the advanced stages of liver cirrhosis. And the nurse that brought us in used to be seven weeks pregnant, but the baby is dead now. But, Dean, the little girl? She’s afraid to tell anyone.”

“Okay.” Dean does that thing where he rubs his face when he’s upset about something; Ben saw it a lot when he lived with them. “Okay. I’m going to take care of it. You sit here and think about everything you need to tell me once we get out of here. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

The door closes hard behind Dean, the trail of blood splatter behind him disappearing only seconds after.

Ben lies back on the table, the protective paper crinkling beneath him. He throws his arm over his eyes, blocking out the harsh florescent light, and lets out a sigh of relief. It’s nice to lie down again. His eyes slip closed, his mind starts to float-

A knock on the door, three sharp raps, and the doctor comes in.

Ben throws his arm off with a huff and struggles to sit up. He shifts around so he can sit more comfortably on the table, the protective paper crinkling obnoxiously under him. Then he looks up at the doctor, and -

He goes completely still.

“Good morning, Benjamin. I’m Dr. Lawrence,”

On the surface, the doctor is a pleasant looking man, graying at the temples, glasses perched on the end of his nose, a blue checked shirt and khakis under a white lab coat. But inside, he’s just a golden light, body-shaped and bright, undulating like plasma on the surface of the sun. He is studying the clip board intently, the body’s mouth turned down thoughtfully as if he’s pondering the information, trying to process it. But it’s a lie, all a lie, because the silvery soul of the guy he’s occupying is shoved down deep, barely even a flicker of life there anymore, and the light is looking right at Ben, and it already knows exactly what’s wrong.

It doesn’t occur to him to think anything of it at first.

The dreams, the déjà vu – okay, yeah. It’s annoying to wake up exhausted, knowing he had dreamed but unable to remember what exactly. And he kind of hates the swimmy, disoriented feeling that comes with the déjà vu when he drops his keys while locking the front door or when he catches a glimpse of his mom at the kitchen counter, standing in a partial tree pose as she sorts through the mail, and feels like this has all happened before.

But he has other things on his mind, big things, like the fact that he had lost every memory he had of Dean and then suddenly regained them. Or the fact that if it weren’t for the pictures on the corkboard in the kitchen, he wouldn’t have known Dean was real. Sure, they have some of his stuff – the golf clubs in the closet, the tool chest in the garage, the DVD boxed set of the Indiana Jones movies – but there’s no proof that they had ever really been his. Anything that he could specifically identify as Dean’s can’t be found, but the pictures, they tell Ben that he’s real, that he was a part of their lives at some point.

The first thing he does, of course, is ask his mom if she remembers Dean.

“Dean?” she says distantly, as she hangs her coat in the hall closet. “Isn’t he a friend of yours? The one with the glasses?”

“No, that’s Derek. I mean Dean.”

“Dean who?” she asks as she heads for the kitchen.

Ben follows, a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. “Dean Winchester. Remember?”

“No. I don’t know anyone named Dean.” She turns around when she sees the stack of dirty dishes in the sink, hands on her hips, her lips pursed in anger. “Ben, didn’t I tell you to clean the kitchen?”

Ben nods, that sinking feeling now a heavy lead weight of terror in the pit of his stomach. “Yeah. Sorry. I’ll do it right now.”

That night, while she’s in the shower, Ben checks her cell phone, hoping that Dean’s numbers are still there, but they’re gone, deleted, as are any other names he might have associated with Dean.

He has to wait until the next day when his mom goes to the studio to teach her Sunday afternoon classes to use her computer. He Googles Dean, hoping for something, anything that will help contact him, but all he finds are old news articles from several years ago and a few from last year about a killing spree that Dean and Sam had supposedly gone on, but whatever, that couldn’t have been them. He also finds YouTube videos by a couple of geeks calling themselves the Ghostfacers; they’re idiots, but they also give some legit tips about salting doorways and detecting ghosts in between long bouts of bitching about ‘those Winchester douche bags.’

None of it is very helpful, but at least he knows Dean is real.

He even looks up Bobby Singer, who they stayed with back when Sam reappeared alive and hunting something dangerous. He had had a kick ass house, crazy supernatural books and weird trinkets and guns everywhere, which Ben hadn’t touched though he had dearly wanted to. That had been before he’d picked up a gun himself (there had been a guy in that body, shoved down deep, underneath the demon), and felt how wrong it had felt in his hand, like he should have been using something else instead.

But he comes up empty on Bobby, too, only finding an article about his house burning down about a year ago, and how he is now missing and assumed dead.

Ben is so frustrated and upset and scared by that point that he can’t do much the rest of the day, just hides in his room playing videogames. He goes to bed early without finishing his math homework and miserably takes the zero from Ms. McNair on Monday.

It doesn’t take long for the déjà vu grow worse, to grow so strong and so overwhelming that Ben can’t help but notice.

His friend Derek tells him a really stupid joke and gets pissy when Ben already knows the punch line. He somehow knows exactly how the newest episode of _The Walking Dead_ will end even though he has never seen the episode before. His history teacher accidentally slings his white board marker across the room, nearly pegging Logan in the head, and Ben spends half of lunch swearing to his friends that the same thing had happened before Christmas, doesn’t anyone remember? 

Then, on his way home from school one afternoon about a week and a half after he remembers, he comes around the corner onto their street, and that swimmy déjà vu feeling washes over him suddenly. He can’t say what triggers it exactly, maybe the gleam of sunlight on a car, the cawing of a few crows on the power lines, the blast of sharp, cold air carrying with it the smell of smoke from someone’s fireplace. He isn’t sure, but he knows that as soon as he makes it to the big sycamore that looms over Ms. Addler’s front yard, she is going to materialize like she does every Thursday to ask him to move her trashcans to the curb. 

That’s not so unusual; Ben is pretty sure that she times her dog walks so that she can ask Ben to move her trashcans. But what makes this different is that he knows that this time, her stupid little dog is going to be wearing one of those cones around its neck and sporting a bandage on its back haunch. And sure enough, as soon as he steps past the sycamore, there she is with the dog, asking him to move her trashcan to the curb for her. All the while, the dog is barking and snarling at him from the clear enclosure of a stiff plastic cone, and Ben finally has to admit that something isn’t right.

That night, he dreams that he’s standing out by the bike rack next to the teachers’ parking lot, unlocking his bike. Logan is standing next to him, hands stuffed in the pockets of his jeans, bitching about his grade on their last math test. He is wearing a vintage Sex Pistols t-shirt turned inside out and has painted an anarchy symbol on the knee of his faded black jeans with some kind of white paint. 

“And there’s the old bag, now,” Logan says uncharitably and gestures towards the building.

Ben looks over his shoulder. Ms. McNair is hurrying out of the building towards the teacher’s parking lot, one hand buried in her handbag. She looks stressed out and distracted, her puke green cardigan sliding down her shoulder, her long silver hair falling out of its knot.

Out of the corner of his eye he sees a car about to back out of its spot, a red Ford truck that belongs to Coach Granger, one of the PE teachers. He turns to watch, and Ms. McNair is still digging in her bag, and the truck keeps backing out, and their paths, Ben can clearly see, are going to cross.

“Oh, crap,” Logan says in the dream, “He’s going to hit her.”

And then he does.

Ben wakes up shaking, heart racing. The dream is so vivid and real even with his alarm clock screaming in his ear and his mom down the hall, yelling at him to get up. The dream lingers all morning, following him to school, and when Logan saunters up to him before first period wearing a Sex Pistols t-shirt, the déjà vu flares up, more intense than ever, and his stomach twists with dread.

But no, he thinks. It’s just a coincidence. It has to be a coincidence.

Then Logan shows up to second period with his t-shirt turned inside out and whining about getting dress coded by the principal in the hallway. Ben’s stomach twists unpleasantly again, even though it’s not actually weird that he got dress coded for wearing a shirt with the word sex on it as much as Logan insists it is. But at lunch, Ben watches as Mindy Wallace paints the anarchy symbol on Logan’s knee with a bottle of white out taken off some teacher’s desk. His stomach is twisted up in a permanent knot at that point. He can’t manage to choke down the rest of his sandwich, and lets Derek have his Doritos.

Ben is a bundle of nerves by the time sixth period comes along and he files into math along with the rest of the class, all of them dead silent and terrified of Ms. McNair’s wrath. She’s in the puke green cardigan today, her long silver hair coiled in a knot, and Ben feels that lightheaded dizziness of remembering the future as she moves up and down between the desks, returning their tests. Ben isn’t surprised when Logan hisses out an angry noise and flashes the big red F on the top of his test at Ben.

Math class passes in a haze of numbers and X’s and Y’s. He has to say something. Doesn’t want to, can’t imagine how it can possibly go – _Hey, Ms. McNair, I had a dream that you’re going to get hit by Coach Granger in the parking lot after school, please watch where you’re going_. She’ll think he’s crazy, but Dean, Dean would say something whether he sounded crazy or not. Dean’s not here, but Ben is, and he’s not the one with the dream and the déjà vu anyway. 

When the bell rings, he approaches Ms. McNair even as the rest of the class hustles out, eager to escape from school. His mouth is dry and his stomach is rolling, but this is the right thing to do, even if he’s going to sound crazy. 

He clears his throat awkwardly. “Um, Ms.McNair?”

“Yes, Benjamin?” she says, peering at him over the rims of her glasses as she hastily packs up her shoulder bag. 

Ben just stares at her, paralyzed like he had been in the warehouse when he saw the blood gushing out of his mother’s side. He can hear his blood rushing in his ears and the heavy industrial whirr of the air conditioner and the shouts of kids out by the bus ramp coming at him from so very far away.

“Benjamin?” Ms. McNair is starting to look concerned. “Is there something wrong?”

Reality snaps back into focus. This is ridiculous. He can’t possibly be dreaming about the future, and he’s going to sound like an idiot if he starts talking about how she’s going to get hit by a car in about ten minutes.

Ben shakes his head, starts backing away. “No. Nothing’s wrong. Sorry, Ms. McNair.” 

He can’t get out of the room fast enough.

Logan is waiting for him in the hallway when Ben comes barreling out, heading straight for the nearest exit and the bike rack, just wanting to get on his bike and go. Logan keeps pace with him, chattering about how hot Mindy is and how she said the thing he was making in art was cool and can he believe that McNair gave him an F on that test? Dizziness swamps Ben, and he looks up at Logan, who says, right on cue, “And there’s the old bag, now,” as he gestures towards the building.

Ben feels like he’s trapped underwater as he looks over his shoulder, sees Ms. McNair hurrying out of the building towards the parking lot. The details match the dream to a tee - one hand is buried in her handbag, the puke green cardigan sliding down her shoulder, her long silver hair is falling out of its knot.

I can stop this, he thinks.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the flash of tail lights as the truck begins to back out of its spot.

I _have_ to stop this, he thinks, but he doesn’t move, doesn’t blink, doesn’t even breathe. The truck keeps coming, and Ms. McNair keeps walking. 

Logan straightens, his eyes widen. “Oh, crap,” he says, hitting his cue again, “He’s going to hit her.”

And then he does.

There’s a terrible thud and someone is screaming, and there’s shouting and blood and the wail of sirens in the distance. Ben stands on the edge of the parking lot with Logan and the rest of the kids, watching as the paramedics arrive and a fire truck and a cop car. One of the seventh grade teachers shoos them away just before they move Ms. McNair onto the stretcher, and Ben rides his bike home slowly, stomach twisting with guilt, and doesn’t even complain that night when his mom gets mushrooms on their pizza again even though he tells her all the time that he doesn’t like them.

His dreams are worse that night.

He dreams about a room with a stained mattress and a green book and white walls covered in strange symbols; he dreams of hauling himself up into multi colored climbing tubes in a playground while he shakes with cold; he dreams of falling to his knees, his hands covered with red and gold paint, and he dreams of a black sky, blanketed with stars, and wings, rising up above him to block them out.

He dreams that he calls his mother, and she just doesn’t answer.

He wakes exhausted, stumbles down stairs and sits down at the counter. His mom is awake and perky, making Saturday morning pancakes and humming tunelessly, her hair pulled back in a bright pink clip. She looks happy, like she did when Dean lived with them, when he was the one standing at the counter whipping the batter and heating the skillet. Ben feels a sudden flare of hope; they had never had Saturday morning pancakes before Dean lived with them.

“Mom, are you sure you don’t remember Dean?”

She looks up at him, gives him a smile that crinkles the lines around her eyes, but her eyes are empty of recognition. “Dean who, baby?”

Well, he probably should have expected that.


	4. Chapter 4

It takes Dean a minute or two to get himself under control when he steps out into the hallway, fighting his urge to go back in and keep an eye on Ben. Dreams about the future and diagnosing health problems at sight – whatever the kid had gotten into after Dean left, it is serious mojo. Dean doesn’t want to take his eyes off him, not for one second, but he doesn’t hunt fairytale monsters just to let the human ones come in afterwards and hurt little kids anyway. Dean squares his shoulders and heads back towards the waiting room. It will only take him a minute to say something to the nurses, then he’ll go back to Ben, make sure he doesn’t develop the ability to teleport or to turn invisible or whatever.

This clinic is like every clinic he’s ever been in: calming pastel walls, bland landscapes, the occasional drug advertisement, a few random pieces of medical equipment cluttering the hallways. There are several closed doors that presumably open into exam rooms, including Ben’s, and an ugly ass poster of the cardio vascular system. 

At the corner, Dean turns, expecting to see the hallway the nurse first brought him and Ben down, the one that goes past the front desk, but that’s not what he gets.

Disoriented, confused, Dean stops dead. Takes one cautious step back. Peers down the hallway he had just come down. 

The hallway is back the way he came, exactly as he had left it. 

The same hallway is also right in front of him, a perfect replica right down to the cart of little plastic pee cups sitting against one wall.

Dean doesn’t waste any more time gawking at the trickery. He turns back the way he came, not bothering to investigate this whole duplicated hallway thing, just focuses on grabbing Ben and getting the hell out of there. But right as he’s reaching for the doorknob of Ben’s exam room, his fingers only millimeters away, the lights flicker once, twice, and then the door into Ben’s exam room just vanishes from the wall.

He stands there, heart pounding, hand still extended, still reaching for the knob that is longer there.

Shit. He’s lost Ben. 

At that point, Dean is more than a little panicked, but he gets a firm grip on himself. He’s faced down demons and archangels, handled alternate universes, Purgatory, and even Hell, so he’s not going to panic. He can handle a disappearing door.

He takes a minute to run through the list of things that could pull off this kind of trickery, what had enough power to bend space and Dean’s perception this way.

The list is unpleasantly long.

He runs his hands over the wall where the door should go, wondering if it’s just an illusion, but all he feels is smooth, semi-gloss over plaster. Then he heads back down the hallway, wondering if he’ll find Ben’s door on that one, like maybe it’s a moving door or whatever. He knows it’s a futile hope, but that’s all he’s got. But he turns the corner, finds the same hallway and he goes to the end of that hallway, and he finds the same hallway yet again.

He tells himself that panic is not an option and turns around, goes back he way he came, since going forward isn’t helping, and runs into the same problem: same hallway, no matter how many times he turns the corner, and always no door into Ben’s exam room.

It’s an infinite loop of hallways, the same hallway connecting to itself on both ends, forever and into infinity. It feels like it goes on for hours, just him and the same hallway on endless repeat, like the background of a _Scooby Doo_ cartoon where the Scooby gang runs from old Mr. Jenkins in the swamp monster costume, except snatching off the swamp monster mask isn’t going to stop the bad guy when Dean catches him.

Here, in the real world, swamp monsters wear people faces.

* * *

“Sounds like you’re one sick kid. Fever, chills, bloody sputum, and a mass of fluid sitting in your lungs,” the not-doctor says casually, as if he’s not a glowing ball of light crammed into some poor man’s body. He flips the chart over and scans the next page. “I have to say, it’s better than I expected. When you disappeared from Battle Creek, I was quite distressed, though I didn’t become properly worried until I lost your trail in Charlotte. If you hadn’t come in for medical attention, I might have never found you.”

Ben doesn’t say anything. His breath is frozen in his throat, and his blood is rushing in his ears, and where is Dean because there is a thing inside this doctor’s body, and it’s in the room with him. Should he scream? Call out for Dean?

The doctor looks up and gives him a benign smile. “Ah. You’re thinking about screaming or something equally futile, aren’t you? Relax. I’m not here to hurt you, and no one would come, anyway.” He sets the clipboard on the counter and leans against it, arms crossed. He studies Ben. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

Ben shakes his head. He had seen some weird stuff in the last few weeks, but nothing like this. “I think I would have remembered something like you.”

“You think so, hmm?” The not-doctor pushes away from the counter. “Well, let’s see what we can do for the pneumonia before you end up in the hospital and draw unwanted attention.”

He reaches for Ben like this is all okay and normal and not at all terrifying, but Ben leans back, out of his reach. 

“Don’t touch me.”

The not-doctor sighs in exasperation. “Ben, be reasonable. Your immune system is taking a kicking right now, and if I don’t do something, it will only get worse.”

“ _Why_?” Ben can hear the whiny plea in his voice, and he hates it, hates letting this thing see his desperation, but he needs some answers and no one seems to have any. “What’s wrong with me? I’ve been dreaming about the future and I’m seeing things I shouldn’t be able to see, like vampires and demons and what’s wrong with all those people out in the waiting room-”

“Oh, I have no doubt. The future, debilitating medical conditions, wounded souls. That battered and bloody soul Dean Winchester is dragging around must be painful to look at all the time. And Sam Winchester’s?” He shakes his head. “Well, better you than me.”

Ben’s insides twist in terror. “How do you-“

“How do I know that –“ The doctor reaches back for the clip board and peers at the paperwork. “-Roger Waters is, in fact, Dean Winchester? Very few people walk the earth stinking of hellfire like he does. Only two, in fact, and the other one is his brother.”

Ben has no idea what that’s supposed to mean, but he gets the point. Dean and Sam are on this thing’s radar. Crap. What has he done?

The not-Doctor reaches for him again. “Now, be still. Let me take care of the pneumonia.”

Ben ducks his hands again. “No. Not until you tell me what’s wrong with me.”

The not-Doctor sighs in exasperation. “You’ve been using the gift of prophecy. It’s not your natural talent, and so you’ve been using more of your soul to power it. Your body can’t deal with the drain, hence the pneumonia.”

“But where did it come from? Why did I start dreaming about the future in the first place?”

He gives him a stern look over the rim of his glasses. “You won’t remember it, even if I do tell you.”

“Why not?”

“Selective amnesia due to trauma. You know what that is, do you not?”

Ben nods, because yeah, he does. Just like he knows what liver cirrhosis is and what a dead fetus looks like still floating in the amniotic fluid of the mother’s womb. But he also knows he hasn’t experienced any trauma since the car accident that neither involved a car nor was any kind of accident. He doesn’t know what the hell this thing is up to, but Ben’s not going to let it scare him. “I can handle it. Tell me.”

He smirks at him. “Very well. About two months ago, I asked you to-“

The world sort of skips a beat. Ben feels adrift for a moment, and there’s this flash of something, a bright light, the memory of a burn in his chest, and then he blinks, realizing that he has somehow managed to lose track of what the not-doctor was saying.

He blinks, confused and embarrassed that he lost the thread of the conversation just when he was getting answers. “What?”

The not-Doctor shakes his head. “Told you. Now be still.”

This time, the not-doctor is fast. He has a hand on Ben before he can even think to dodge him again, and he can’t move, his muscles frozen, his limbs unresponsive. Warmth washes through him, head to foot, a floating, gentle feeling, all of his pain gone for a split second, all the ache and fevered heat. Billions of bacteria die with one massive, death scream, becoming oceans of microscopic corpses drifting lifeless between his cells in a split second.

The not-doctor lets him go and steps away, eyeing him thoughtfully. 

“That should do it,” he says, and something deep in Ben’s chest flutters and shifts, stealing his breath.

“What-“ he starts to say, but then his whole body tightens and his diaphragm contracts, and the breath he sucks in just before the coughing begins almost isn’t enough to keep him conscious.

He doubles over, tears running from the corners of his eyes, helpless as his body spasms and heaves against his will. 

“Come here,” the not-doctor says, pulling him down from the table. 

Ben slides off helplessly, and he has no choice but to let the not-doctor guide him, stumbling, to the sink. Wave after wave of fluid comes up out of his lungs, dark and gelatinous and bloody. His chest is screaming bloody murder, and his ears pop, and his throat burns. Tears slide down his cheeks. He braces himself over the sink with his arms on each side and just rides it out, while the not-doctor rests his hand on his back, and spasm after spasm rocks his body, forcing the bacterial debris up and out.

The not-doctor’s hand finally drops away, and the coughing stops as if a switch has been thrown.

Ben straightens, breathing hard, and wipes his mouth with the sleeve of the jacket. He half expects the coughing to start again, but nothing happens. In fact, he feels amazing compared to how he felt when he walked into the room.

The not-doctor gives him a smile as he turns on the water, rinsing the sink. It’s almost pleasant but mostly smug, and that sun-surface light inside of him roils with pride. “Feel better?”

“What did you do to me?” He doesn’t know what’s happening or why, but he’s starting to suspect this thing is responsible for it. 

“What? Kill that festering colony of bacteria growing in your lungs?” He picks up the clipboard, starts scribbling on Ben’s chart. “Mind you, I can’t do anything about the fever, and you will probably spend the rest of the day coughing up the remains, but you should be more or less well by tomorrow morning.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

The not-doctor goes horribly still, his hand pausing mid-scribble, and his eyes slide towards Ben like he has just noticed him for the first time. His inner light churns and boils and froths, and his mouth curls into a twisted snarl.

Ben cringes away, mouth suddenly gone dry.

“Because, Ben, you’re _special_.” He spits out ‘special’ like it’s the kind of word Ben would pay money into the swear jar for saying. “You have latent power in you that hasn’t properly surfaced yet and wouldn’t have for a few more years except that I had a crisis on my hands and had no other recourse. I needed your divinity, and none of this would be a problem if you had stayed in Battle Creek. But no, you had to go chasing after Dean Winchester-“

He suddenly slings the clipboard across the counter, knocking over a canister of tongue depressors and a display of brochures about smoking, and sending it over the far end where it ricochets off the wall and lands onto the ground. The lights flicker, and the room seems too hot suddenly, the air heavy and thick. Ben slinks back, away from the doctor, his skin crawling. He thinks about making a run for it, wonders if he can make it to the door, but the not-doctor comes at him, crowding him against the exam table. He peers down at Ben like he’s something disgusting he stepped in and needs to scrape off his shoe.

“I don’t understand why he was so attentive to you. You will never choose him.” The not-doctor grabs Ben’s chin and forces his head back, eyes roving Ben’s face. “A waste of his divinity,” he says in disgust.

Ben swallows around the lump of terror in his throat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The not-doctor smiles, and it’s awful. “Oh, Ben, you don’t think Dean Winchester is actually your father, do you?”

And that’s when the door opens, and Dean himself comes bursting in like the room is on fire, eyes wide, one hand already in his jacket, going for a weapon.

“Sleep,” the not-doctor says without even looking in Dean’s direction.

Dean drops like a rock. 

“No!” Ben cries and starts for him - he can’t lose both Mom and Dean, he can’t – but the not-doctor slaps a hand against his chest and forces him back against the exam table. 

“Calm down. He’s fine, and he will stay that way as long as you do not tell him about me or what I did here. Are we clear?”

Ben nods, not about to argue anything at this point, not with Dean unconscious on the floor. 

“Be sure about that, Ben.” It looms over him, its light writhing with fury. “Because I can destroy as well as I can heal, and I have enough power to make short work of the Winchesters. It wouldn’t take much – a bit of Bubonic plague, or maybe the Spanish flu, and they will be pieces of meat rotting in the earth.”

“Yeah,” he says quickly, knowing exactly how fast either of those diseases would kill them. “I won’t tell him anything, I promise.”

That awful smile comes back, and the not-Doctor pats Ben kindly on the shoulder. “Good lad.”

He turns, steps over Dean, opens the door. 

“Wait!” The words are out of Ben’s mouth before he can think better of it, before he can even think at all, and he keeps talking even as the not-doctor pauses in the doorway, eyes narrowed in a way that makes Ben want to curl in on himself. “The little girl in the waiting room-“

The not-doctor rolls his eyes. “Yes, I know about her. I’ll see to it.” He disappears into the hallway, the door swinging closed behind him, his final words slipping through before the door snicks closed: “It’s not as if I can leave here until I do.”

* * *

Dean comes to being shaken violently.

He groans, opens his eyes, finds himself on the cold, hard floor of the clinic exam room, and Ben huddled over him, his hands fisted in the front of his jacket in a white knuckled grip. It’s just the two of them, no doctor thing with the mind whammy, no flickering lights or disappearing doors.

“Ben? Is it gone?”

Ben nods. His breath is coming in shallow little pants, and he has a glazed look in his eyes that makes Dean’s gut twist with fear. 

“You okay?” he asks.

Ben shakes his head. 

“It will be all right.” Dean folds his hands over Ben’s and tugs them off. “We’re leaving now, okay? Move so I can sit up.”

Ben nods and shuffles back on his knees, giving Dean the space he needs to get upright. Dean stumbles sideways, sluggish and disoriented, like he’s just been woken up from an hour’s worth of sleep after being up for forty-eight. He grabs for the counter and holds on tight until his head stops swimming, then stumbles to the door to check the hallway. 

Empty.

He turns to Ben, who is still on his knees, back bowed, hands flat on the floor. 

“Ben? You with me?”

Ben looks up, his eyes shining and moist. Dean has become very familiar with what terrified looks like in his line of work, and this is it, Ben hunched up on the floor with that glazed expression, paralyzed with fear and practically unresponsive. He’s seen Ben like this before, back in that warehouse when the demon stabbed Lisa. Dean had slapped him then – there hadn’t been any time to shake him out of it any other way, and he felt like shit about it even now – and he really, really doesn’t want to do it again.

“I thought you wouldn’t-“ Ben begins, voice rasping and raw, then stops, swallows thickly, doesn’t finish the thought. At least he’s responding this time.

“Well, I did.” Dean doesn’t know what Ben thought he wouldn’t do, but he has his suspicions. “So, come on. Let’s go before it decides to come back.”

Ben comes easily to his feet, lets Dean hustle him down the hallway and out the back. It’s still raining, a light shower that that dribbles cold water down the back of Dean’s neck. Half a dozen crows perched on the power lines watch them with beady black eyes as Dean gets Ben in the car. They scatter into the air in surprise when he guns the engine and peels out of the parking lot.

Rage and fear overwhelm any relief that they got out of there in one piece. Dean really wants to go back to the hotel, get Sammy, and hunt down the evil son of a bitch that had Ben trapped in that room, but his instincts are telling him to get Ben away from here as soon as possible, instincts that call back to his childhood when Dean had one job, just one job, and that was to protect Sammy no matter what. Except it isn’t just protect Sammy anymore, it’s protect Ben, because Lisa is in the wind, and Ben is his now.

Dean tries not to be overwhelmed at that thought.

Ben finally, _finally_ gets a breakthrough on Dean one miserably cold Saturday morning while he’s raking leaves in the back yard, though it isn’t the kind of breakthrough he was expecting, and it doesn’t actually do him any good.

Ben feels like crap. His fingers are numb even in his gloves. His back has a crick, and his eyes burn with exhaustion. He would love nothing more than to climb into bed and go back to sleep; Mom wouldn’t even notice since he’s actually raking the leaves of his own free will and not because it’s on his chore list. He’s raking to do something, anything because he can’t seem to do anything else.

The dreams have become nothing but an endless, exhausting cycle of nightmares: the splattered mattress, the bitter cold as he heaves himself into the climbing tubes, the wings, blocking out the stars – and they are on constant rotation, slotted in between newer dreams, the ones that happen the next day and are never dreamt of again. He can’t get any rest anymore and he doesn’t understand anything that is happening, the remembering or the forgetting or the dreams that keep coming true.

“Hey, man. What happened to that sweet ride that I used to see in your driveway sometimes?”

Ben nearly comes out of his skin at the sound of the voice. He whirls, heart pounding, to see the neighbor’s son, Jason, half leaning over the fence, eyes bloodshot, his cheeks pink with cold under, of all things, a leopard print ski cap. The kid’s weird, a total pothead; rumor had it he had gone to college but partied away his scholarship and most of his brain cells and had to move back home. His mom has pretty much forbidden Ben to have anything to do with the guy, ever, and usually that’s not a problem because as far as Ben can tell, all he does is sit up in his room all day, listening to Phish and smoking pot, and Ben’s not interested on either account. 

But now he’s here, asking about a sweet ride, and Ben’s pretty sure he isn’t asking about his mom’s CRV.

“What sweet ride?”

“That hot black muscle car I used to see here sometimes.” Jason glances towards the garage like he might see it there. “Used to hear it coming from three blocks away.”

Ben almost can’t breathe, and his blood is rushing in his ears. “You mean the Impala?” 

“Yeah. Fuckin’ beautiful car, man. Your dad sell it or something?”

“My dad?” Ben’s heartbeat kicks up a notch. “You mean Dean?”

Jason nods slowly, like he’s working really hard on remembering. “Yeah, him.”

“You remember Dean?” He sounds like an idiot, he knows that, but even with the proof he had found on the internet, even with the pictures still pinned to the cork board, Ben is starting to question whether Dean was ever real.

The kid just grins. “Yeah. How could I forget? I thought he was going to tear off my arm that time I touched the car. He leave your mom or something?”

Ben shrugs. “Or something.”

Jason nods knowingly. “Sucks, man. My dad didn’t stick around, either. Too bad your mom didn’t get that car in the divorce.”

And then he’s gone, back between the bushes. Ben stands there a minute, feeling sort of overwhelmed and just a little bit stupid. Other than his mother, he had never bothered asking anyone else if they remembered Dean.

Ben drops the rake and heads straight for the phone.

“Of course I remember Dean, sweetie,” Aunt Sarah says, sounding relieved and happy. In the background, he can hear Lucy demanding the phone. “I’m just so glad you’re ready to talk about him now.” 

And then she starts going on about how sometimes grownups just can’t make things work even when they love each other, and blah blah blah. Ben zones her out, realizing that it must have looked like he and Mom had started pretending Dean didn’t exist when they broke up. Of course she wouldn’t have thought they had literally forgotten him; she must have figured they were just too hurt to talk about him when he left.

It takes Ben a while to get to the point of why he called. She wants to talk about why he was ready to talk about Dean, how he felt when he left, and finally, the thing Ben had really called for, had he considered contacting Dean?

“Yeah, but Mom doesn’t have his numbers anymore. And I don’t know how else to find him. You don’t happen to have his number, do you?”

“No, sorry, honey,” she says with a sad sigh. “I don’t.” 

And with that, Ben’s hope of finding Dean crashes to nothing. He gets off the phone after he reassures Sarah that he’s okay about five million times and listens to Lucy tell him all about her new favorite Disney movie which is either _Brave_ or _Snow White_ , he isn’t sure which based on her three year old ramblings. His heart is like a lead weight in his chest, and goes back out to the raking because there really isn’t anything else he can do right now. 

None of this makes sense. Something erased their memories, but didn’t take the pictures off the corkboard and didn’t bother to erase Aunt Sarah or Jason’s memories. He wants to know what made him and him alone suddenly remember, and he wants to know if it’s something he should be worrying about. He wants to know why he’s dreaming about the future, and how to make it stop, because it is confusing and terrifying and why him? 

He wishes someone could give him some answers, wishes that something, anything, would make sense. 

That night he dreams about Dean.

Ben’s riding shotgun in the Impala. There is darkness beyond the windshield, and Dean’s grinning at him in the glow of the dash. Robert Plant is singing in the background, and Ben hears himself say, “Why did you make us forget? Wasn’t leaving enough? If you didn’t want us anymore, you could have just said so.” 

Dean starts, looks in his direction then looks away again. He must be wounded - there is blood gushing out of a hole in his side and soaking through his clothes – but he isn’t acting wounded and in the dream, Ben doesn’t feel all that worried about it. Dean clears his throat, reaches out, and pops a tape out of the tape deck. Zeppelin falls silent. 

“How, um, how did you know about that?” Dean says, and Ben jerks awake, tears sliding down his cheeks, his gut twisting and churning, like he’s been punched hard. The sick feeling of being betrayed is sharp and agonizing, worse than it had been when he had thought Dean was just leaving them. 

Dean did this to them.

 _Dean_.

“Ben, baby, what’s wrong?” His mom is standing in the doorway, silhouetted by the hallway light. 

He realizes he has been sobbing loud and hard like a little kid, not even thinking about how he might wake his mom. He rolls onto his side and puts his back to her, tries to reign in the tears. He doesn’t want to scare her. 

“Nothing, mom. It was just a bad dream. I’m okay.”

“No you’re not.” The bed dips as she sits on the edge behind him. Her hand is cool on his forehead and she brushes back his hair, soft and gentle. It’s nice and comforting and he feels like a baby for enjoying it so much. He feels so far away from everyone these days; it’s nice to be touched.

“Am, too,” he mumbles even as his chest hitches with another sob.

“Don’t lie to me. You’ve been distracted lately. You don’t hang out with your friends anymore, and I know you’ve been sleeping badly. Come on, Ben. Tell me what’s going on.”

Ben wants to tell her. So badly he wants to tell her. “Nothing, mom. Seriously. Nothing.”

She makes a skeptical noise. “You don’t have to tell me all of it. Just some of it. Let me help you.”

Ben doesn’t say anything, just lies there and lets her pet his hair, stomach twisting so bad again he thinks he might throw up. There’s nothing he can tell her, nothing to make her stop worrying because she doesn’t remember anything, not the changelings or the salt lines in front of the doors or the demons dragging them out of the house. Everything connected to Dean is just gone from her memory and anything he can tell her now would just make him sound crazy.

Ben has never felt so alone in his life.

“Ben?” she says eventually. “Baby, you can tell me anything. I love you, and there’s nothing that can change that. Please talk to me.”

Ben shuts his eyes, tears sliding from beneath his lashes. She sounds scared and desperate, and he hates that he has made her feel that way.

“Come on, Ben,” she says soft and gentle as she strokes his hair. “Let me help. Whatever it is, we can work it out.”

Ben sighs as something fragile and shaky inside him gives. “Do you know who my dad is?” 

He doesn’t know why he asks. Maybe he is hoping she’ll give him a name, some guy he’s never met, who never left them or wiped their memories. He knows she won’t, because he knows who his dad is. He had it figured out a long time ago, back when Dean lived with them. He had overheard Aunt Sarah asking mom about it when they thought he was outside, and he had heard the way his mom didn’t exactly say no, and he had already noticed how much he looked like Dean, anyway. People had assumed Dean was his dad all the time, and sometimes it had seemed like the only person who didn’t know was Dean.

His mom freezes, her hand going still on his hair.

“Is that what this is about?” She sounds almost relieved, but still scared, still anxious.

Ben doesn’t know how to answer that, so he just shrugs. 

She’s quiet for a long time. Just when Ben starts to worry about her silence, the bed shimmies as she shifts back to lean against the headboard. “I have to be honest with you, Ben.” 

The way she says it makes Ben go cold. He rolls back so he can look at her over his shoulder. He can see the gleam of tears brimming in her eyes in light spilling in from the hallway

“I made some poor choices when I was younger. I did a lot of things I will never tell you about, and I don’t always remember the names of everyone involved.” Her voice wavers, thick with tears. “I don’t know who your father is. I’m so sorry, baby. Please don’t hate me.”

For a split second Ben hears the demon speaking in his mother’s voice: _Who knows who your real dad is, kid? Your mom's a slut_. And then he sits up and throws his arms around her. He buries his face in the crook of her neck like he used to when he was little, breathing in the familiar scent of the vanilla lotion she has used since forever. He holds her tight, silently willing her not to cry. He is such a douche. Why did he ask her a question he knew she wouldn’t remember the answer to? 

“It’s all right, Mom. It’s okay. I don’t need a dad.” Especially not one that erases their memories, but he doesn’t say that out loud. 

Her voice sounds steady as she continues, so maybe the tears won’t come. “Maybe not. But I wish I could give you one.” Her voice drops to a whisper. “I thought there was this guy once-“

Ben thinks about the dream, and the Dean’s wild eyed look and his complete lack of denial about erasing their memories. He hadn’t just left them, he had removed himself so completely from their lives that they didn’t remember them. Now his mother is almost in tears because she thinks Ben is going to hate her for not being able to name his father, which is stupid, not only because he knows who his dad is, but also because it has always only ever been him and his mom and they had never needed anyone else, and how could he ever hate her?

But he does hate Dean. Suddenly and powerfully and _hard_. 

Ben doesn’t need a dad, never has, never will, and he’ll figure out what’s happening on his own. He’s done with Dean, done missing him and wishing he were here, done hoping he’s going to show up out of nowhere and make all their problems go away. 

Or so he thinks right up until he sees the demon sitting across from him at Aunt Sarah’s kitchen table five days later.


	5. Chapter 5

Ben won’t talk.

They are making steady progress north on I-95 towards the Georgia border, the fastest way out of Florida as Dean can find. The tension and terror are easing off the further they travel away from that clinic, though Dean hasn’t relaxed, won’t relax until he’s eradicated the evil son of a bitch that trapped him in the _Scooby Doo_ hallway while it was terrorizing Ben.

He keeps glancing between the road and Ben in the rearview mirror. He’s huddled down in the backseat, gazing out the window, eyes distant. He looks a hell of a lot better now than when he had gone into that exam room, no more chills, no more wet coughing, no more flushed cheeks. Even the scrapes on his cheek and the split lip have completely healed. Dean has no clue what actually went on while they were separated, but he is not relieved to see Ben’s suddenly improved health.

“Come on, kiddo. You’ve got to tell us what is going on so we can fix this.”

Ben shakes his head again, keeping his thousand yard stare on the passing scenery. “No.”

“Dammit, Ben. Why not?”

“Because he threatened to kill you if I told you.”

“So? Things threaten to kill me all the time. It’s what monsters do. So come on, tell us what happened.”

“No.” Ben looks up, meets Dean’s eyes in the rearview mirror. He’s wearing a familiar, mulish expression, the one that John Winchester wore when he was set on a course and there was no going back. “No one else is going to die.”

Sam shifts around and hooks one arm over the back of the seat. “Who else died, Ben?”

Sam had taken it all in stride when Dean had come crashing into the room, telling him that Ben was diagnosing people at sight and that there had been a thing alone with Ben and they were getting the hell out of Dodge right the fuck now. He’d just said something about calling Garth about sending someone else on this job and started packing, asking questions here and there as Dean gave him the quick and dirty version of what happened at the clinic. And then he had said, “Huh,” like Dean was providing him with an interesting bit of trivia, not giving him the run down on a monster that had almost taken Ben. Dean had noted it in the usual way that he notes all the weird shit Sam says and does, distantly but in nuanced detail. 

“Ben, your mom’s not dead.” Dean knows she might be; that’s the way their lives go. But until he has proof, he isn’t going to let Ben think that way. 

“I wasn’t just talking about mom.” 

“You mean your uncle?” Sam asks.

Ben doesn’t reply. Dean finds him in the rearview mirror again; his eyes are wet, his lips pressed together. The wind shield wipers are making a steady shoosh-thunk in the heavy silence, and Dean is starting to get where this is going. 

“Ben?” Dean says gently, taking a page out of Sammy’s book. “How did Bill die?” 

Ben hesitates for a second, then says quietly, “He was possessed.”

Possessed. The word rattles around in his head, drops yet another lead weight of fear into the pit of his stomach. Dean glances at Sam, who shrugs, apparently unsurprised. 

“Can you tell us what happened, Ben?” Sam says.

Ben sighs wearily, like he’s got the weight of the world on his shoulders, and it’s a sound he’s too young to be making. “I looked up at the dinner table one night at Aunt Sarah’s, and I could see the demon inside of him.”

“You could see the-“ Dean stops himself, huffs out a breath of frustration, keeps to the original line of questioning. He would have to come back to that. “That’s why you had the research on demons.”

Ben shrugs. “Well, I couldn’t just let it stay there with Lucy and Aunt Sarah.” 

“No,” Dean says with his own weary sigh. Ben had bagged a demon to protect his aunt and cousin; Dean doesn’t know whether to be proud or terrified. “No, you couldn’t.” 

“So, you exorcized it,” Sam says, keeping them all on task, “and Bill was dead when the demon left. Am I right?” 

“Yeah.”

Sam glances at Dean, his expression sad and concerned and apologetic all at once. Dean knows he’s is thinking the same thing as he is, that Ben’s too young for any of this.

“Ben, you didn’t kill him,” Sam says gently. “He was already dead before you exorcised the demon.”

“You sure?” Ben looks to Dean for confirmation. 

Dean nods. “Yeah. Me and Sam are old hat at this. Trust me, the demon killed him before you exorcised it. It wasn’t your fault. Okay?”

Ben looks out the window again, misty eyed.

“Ben, okay?”

A slight nod. “Yeah. Okay.”

They just ride for a while. Ben lapses back into silence. Sam pulls the box of tapes out of the floor between his feet and picks through them. Dean drums his fingers on the steering wheel, a familiar burn churning in his gut. The rain picks up, drums heavy on the car for a few minutes before it eases off again.

“So the thing back in the clinic?” It just comes out. Dean can’t help it. Ben isn’t talking because he is trying to protect Dean, which is just un-fucking-acceptable. “Was it a demon, too?”

Sam sighs and puts aside the box. “Dean.”

“I told you I’m not going to talk about it,” Ben says.

“Ben-“

“Dude.” Sam gives him a meaningful look, one that’s begging Dean to let him handle it. “Let it go.”

Sam’s working this like it’s a case, which is the right way to go about it because it _is_ a case, but something about that chafes, gets under his skin. Because this isn’t a case, this is Ben. Ben, and Lisa, who’s missing, and a whole lot of other stuff that was never supposed to happen once he left them. They should have been better off without him. They should have been safe.

But they weren’t, and that’s all on Dean’s head. 

Dean nods, puts both hands on the wheel, and lets Sam take this one. 

“So, what about the things you’ve been seeing, Ben?” Sam is all casual with it, like he’s just starting up conversation. “How do you know when someone’s sick? Will you talk about that?”

Ben’s initial silence is heavy with suspicion, as if he knows there’s a trick there somewhere in Sam’s words but just can’t figure out where. Kid has good instincts, because Sam is in total witness manipulation mode, pulling out the gentle voice and sensitive puppy dog eyes. Ben just doesn’t know Sam well enough yet to recognize it.

“I don’t know how to explain it,” he says at last.

“Well, try,” Dean says, and Sam shoots him a dark look that Dean pointedly ignores.

Ben huffs out one of those longsuffering teenager sighs. It was easy to forget that he was thirteen now, just about the right age for the sarcasm and teenage angst to kick in. Dean’s mental image of Ben is that of a perpetual ten-year-old, bright smiles and all boy, sometimes a little broody, sometimes keenly and even creepily perceptive. He’s not ready to deal with Sammy Part II, where there’s always dramatic sighs and non-stop bitching. He wants to keep Ben at ten-years-old forever, innocent and undamaged and not manifesting scary ass super powers. 

He’s starting to think there’s some kind of genetic curse locked onto Winchester DNA, designed to rip away everything good in their lives then kick them when they’re down.

“It’s kind of like there’s a see-through image on top of the person,” Ben finally says, “but it’s all images of what’s making them sick. Or if they’re bruised or have a scar, I can tell what made it.”

“Will you show me?” Sam holds up his hand, the one with the shiny, circular scar on the palm. “What about the scar on my hand?”

“Sam,” Deans says in warning, because he really doesn’t want Ben exposed to anything having to do with that scar. After what he saw of Ben’s abilities this morning in the clinic, he’s pretty sure Ben’s going to be able to read it all.

“You don’t want to see it in action?” Sam says, the edge of a challenge in his voice.

No. No, he doesn’t. Dean doesn’t want to see proof that nothing he has done has protected Ben or Lisa, but he knows they need to see it, to figure out what’s going on with Ben.

“Dean?” Ben says.

Dean sighs. “Go on. Let’s see it.”

“Well, um, you cut it on glass,” Ben says slowly, sounding nervous. “It was covered in some kind of blood? And-“

He stops, and a quick glance in the rearview mirror shows Ben hunching down into himself. 

“And?” Sam says.

“And you used to press it to remember where you were.” The words come out in a rush, like Ben can’t get them out fast enough. “And to get him, whatever he was, to shut up.”

A beat of silence from Sam; he wasn’t expecting the depth of Ben’s insight. 

“That’s a lot of information from just one scar.” Sam’s voice is strained.

Ben shrugs. “It’s just kind of there.”

“Like it’s on my soul?”

Dean gives Sam a sharp look. Sam ignores him.

“Yeah. I guess.” Ben says.

Dean scrubs his hand over his mouth. “When did this start?”

“This morning.”

“This _morning_?” 

“Yeah. I woke up and could see all this stuff.”

“But you could see the demon possessing Bill, what, a month ago?” Sam asks.

“Yeah. I’ve been able to see those kinds of things since then.”

The steering wheel creaks as Dean’s grip tightens; this is not getting any better at all. “What things?”

“I don’t know what they were. They looked human on the surface, but I could tell they weren’t. There was a vampire, and this other thing with red eyes and a weird black hole instead of a regular mouth.” Ben pauses, thinking hard. “I don’t really know what that one was.”

Dean has no idea what the thing with red eyes and a black hole for a mouth was, either. “They attack you?” 

Ben hesitates. “No,” he says, and that’s another lie. 

“Is that all you saw?” Sam asks. He must have caught the lie, too.

Ben hesitates again, even going so far as to take a little breath like he’s about to say something else, then shakes his head. “No. Nothing else.”

Another damned lie. Ben has always reminded Dean of Sam in a lot of little ways, what with dragging home stray animals that Dean is allergic to and his finicky eating and his preference for reading over crappy TV, but he could definitely do without the lies and the secrets and the huffy attitude.

“You’re sure about that? Are we going to get any other nasty surprises?”

Ben gives him a bitchy little half shrug. “Probably.” 

“Yeah, okay. But any time you want to let us in on the whole story-“

“Dude,” Sam says, mildly chiding as he turns around and settles himself in the front seat. 

“We can’t help him if we don’t know what’s going on, Sam.” 

“Dean, man, let it go.” He pops Metallica into the tape deck, which is what he does anytime he’s trying to end a conversation and mollify Dean. He shifts down and crams his long legs under the dash so he can lean his head back against the seat, but he’s frowning, brows drawn, mouth pinched. He’s thinking really hard about something. 

“What is it?” 

Sam shakes his head, “Nothing.”

“Nothing my ass,” Dean mutters, but he lets it go.

* * *

"Do you think we're cursed, Sammy?"  
"Well, yeah." Sam leans back against the Impala next to Dean, hands him a bottle of water from the cooler. They are parked behind a dilapidated cinder block building on a back country road off I-75 north of Atlanta. It had been a gas station in a previous life, but now it’s a convenient barrier, hiding them from the road while Dean stretches his legs and they take a moment to breathe. “It’s been one thing after another our entire lives. Of course we’re cursed.”

"No, Sam, I mean literally cursed. Like maybe one of those Men of Letters Winchesters pissed something off and got our entire bloodline cursed? Because it hasn't just been me and you and Dad who've had their asses handed to them by the supernatural. Look at Henry, look at Adam." The 'look at Ben' remains unsaid, but Sam hears it nonetheless. “It just seems like the Winchesters have gotten way more than our share of misery for it to be plain old bad luck.”

"It's possible.” The clouds had disappeared a couple hours ago, and now the sun is warm on the back of Sam’s neck. It feels nice in the chill of the early spring air. “More likely than blaming it on all those mirrors we broke on the Bloody Mary case.”

It is mostly a joke, because Sam had once wondered whether breaking those mirrors had been the source of their bad luck and eventually dismissed the notion because their bad luck had started way before the mirrors. Dean, however, nods in grave agreement. 

“I considered that, too.” Dean twists the top off of the water bottle and flicks it into the tangled field of half-dead scrub brush between the gas station and the tree line. “But all 600 years of bad luck would have had to come all at once and for everyone we’ve ever known. Retroactively.”

Sam eyes his brother, concerned. “I was just joking, man.”

“I know. But weirder shit has happened to us.”

“Well, I can’t argue that.” 

They fall silent. A murder of crows is perched out in the trees, calling back and forth at each other. Sam watches the black specks hopping around in the treetops as he picks absentmindedly at the corner of the label on his water bottle. Occasionally a bird will shoot out of the trees only to swoop down again and resettle in the branches. A chilly wind blows through, sending dead leaves and bits of sun bleached plastic wrappers skittering across the asphalt. Sam shivers, tugs his collar more against the back of his neck. 

Out on the road, something that sounds like a large truck of trundles past.

Dean says, “Spit it out, Sam. What has your ginormous brain been grinding away at all morning?”

Sam glances at Dean, who is watching him expectantly, then turns to look in on Ben in the backseat. He’s sleeping again, just tall enough that he has to draw his feet on the end of the bench and lean his legs against the back of the seat to fit. His mouth is open and slack in the way that can only be achieved in deep sleep, one hand resting limp on his chest, the other dangling into the floorboard. He looks like Dean when Dean feels safe enough to let himself sleep like that. 

“He’s out cold,” Dean says. “Come on. Spill.”

“Okay.” Sam sets the water bottle on the roof of the car, buying a few seconds because he is really dreading the whole conversation. He stuffs his hands in his pockets, gets comfortable against the car, looks askance at his brother. “But I have a question for you first.” 

“Yeah? Shoot.”

“Do all of Ben’s wounds heal in twenty-four hours?”

Dean makes a face at Sam like he’s being totally ridiculous, like everyone’s wounds healed in such a phenomenally short timeframe and what the hell was wrong with Sam that he was asking stupid questions about it? “Not always, but it doesn’t usually take very long. Why?”

“You don’t think that’s weird? No red flags going up or anything?”

“No. He just has a supercharged immune system.” He raises the water bottle to his lips. “Talk about winning the genetic lottery,” he mutters against the rim.

“So you’re telling me that it doesn’t seem strange to you that the scrapes on his cheek or the cut you gave him yesterday have healed completely? Or that he’s never been sick before?”

“No. Why would it?” Now Dean is getting irritated. “Where you going with this, Sammy?”

Sam studies his brother, awed. That’s some pretty subtle spell work. No trophy wife witch or teenagers with a dark grimoire pulled this off. It had to be someone or something with juice, because Ben’s ultra quick healing and his lack of illness should have raised all kinds of red flags for Dean. He should have been asking questions and doing research on this years ago, not acting like Sam was all kinds of crazy for thinking something was wrong.

“Just bear with me for a minute here.” Sam says, and goes at it from another angle. “Let me ask you this. What if it were another kid who healed like that and who has literally never been sick before? No chickenpox, no colds, no allergies ever. Would you think that was strange?”

“Well, yeah. You’d have to wonder what was boosting their immune-“ Dean stops, mouth turning down into a frown. He rubs his hand across his mouth, shifts his weight. “Sammy, Ben’s a perfectly normal kid, except for, you know.” Sam supposes the jerk of Dean’s head is meant to indicate Ben’s recent outbreak of prescience and his sudden encyclopedic knowledge of medicine. “He just happens to heal quick.”

“You sure about that?”

Dean opens his mouth to say something, the words paused on his lips and waiting to come out, but then his face twists like he’s in pain, and he presses the heel of his hand against his forehead. 

“Dean?”

“Shit, Sammy. It’s like I can’t think about this clearly.”

Dean’s clearly hurting, but Sam presses on. “What else is weird about Ben, Dean?”

“I don’t know.” Dean drops his hand, blinking away a few tears of pain. “Nothing?”

“Are you sure?”

“I think so. Unless-“ Dean closes his eyes, face scrunched up. “Is it weird that I’ve never seen him miss a target, not once, not unless he’s throwing the shot on purpose?”

“What do you mean?”

“Darts, baseball, golf. Anything with a projectile and a target, he hits it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen that kid get a hole in one.”

“Yeah, Dean. I’d call that weird.”

“But it’s not. Not to me, not unless I think of some other kid doing it. I mean, hell, I’m a good shot. I just thought, you know...” Dean trails off with a shrug, his eyes following three crows gliding past them to join the flock in the trees.

It’s the closest Dean has ever come to admitting that he believes Ben is his son.

“But even you miss sometimes,” Sam says, stepping delicately around Dean’s tacit admission. “So, let’s add that to the weird list, even though I don’t quite see how it fits, yet. I assume there’s a reason why he wasn’t dragged in for medical experimentation or signed up for a PGA tour?”

Dean shrugs. “Lisa made a rule a long time ago that Ben had to throw his shots if he wanted to play sports. Same goes for telling people he never gets sick.”

“Those things don’t seem weird to you, but you and Lisa made sure that no one else found out about them?”

“Had to protect him, you know? We knew it wasn’t weird, but other people...” Dean squeezes his eyes shut and digs the heel of his hand into his forehead again. “Jesus, Sammy, are you saying that Ben is some kind of-?”

Sam feels the ghost of Emma rearing up between them, and he wants to slam that door shut as soon as possible.

“No. I’m not,” he says hastily, and it’s true. Ben isn’t like Emma; he’s not some monster made with Dean’s DNA. Ben is just a kid, Dean’s kid and wholly human. Sam knows that in his gut, even if he thinks there something a little extra about Ben, something that didn’t come from Dean or Lisa. The changelings wouldn’t have taken him if he weren’t. But he’s not going to say so to Dean, not right now anyway. He’s got a hunch and he wants proof before he puts Dean on red alert. “But I do think that I need to go to Indianapolis.”

Dean drops his hand and eyes Sam suspiciously. “Why Indianapolis?” 

Sam hesitates, but he always hesitates when he has to talk about things that happened when he had no soul. Most of his memories from the year and a half his body and mind were walking around without him are fuzzy and distant, like watching a movie of his life on an old analogue TV with bad reception. Sam has long stopped poking at the memories; there seems to be a lot more bad than good in them, and at this point, there’s very little he can do to rectify the damage he’s done. But sometimes they aren’t full of thoughtless cruelty and horrendous acts of self interest, sometimes they have a little nugget of useful information. 

Like now.

“Samuel and I investigated these murders. You know, back when you were with Lisa and Ben.” He gestures offhandedly. “Five kids between twelve and seventeen. Something climbed into their rooms in the middle of the night and punched a hole through their chest.”

“Did it take their heart?” 

“No. It didn’t take anything. At least, nothing physical.”

“But you think it took something though?”

“The hole it made was right here.” Sam taps the place where Cas had shoved his fist in and wigged his fingers around looking for something that wasn’t there. He’s been thinking about it all morning, the crime scene photos, the autopsy reports, and that place in his own chest, empty and cold for eighteen months. “Where Cas tried to find my soul.”

“You think it took their souls?” Dean’s voice rises on the last. 

Sam shrugs. “Maybe. We’ve seen it before.”

“Yeah. When the demons were feeding Famine.”

“Well, Ben did exorcize one. But if it makes you feel any better, I don’t think it’s demons anymore. Or at least, not only demons.”

“It really, really doesn’t, Sammy.” Dean rubs a hand over his mouth, shifts from one foot to the other again. “What do you think it is?”

“I don’t know.” A crow swoops in from the east; Sam watches it drop low over the field then rise up and disappear into the treetops. “We never did figure out what had killed the kids. It was gone and the trail was cold by the time we got there. But we had an idea of what had drawn it to them. They were all extremely talented. Like Einstein, Mozart, _Beautiful Mind_ talented. Two were musical prodigies, a third was a scientific genius who was already in the eleventh grade at 13 and wanted to go into medical research. The other two were twins, daughters of a minister of one of those fringe charismatic groups. They were the centerpiece of his church because one of the girls dreamed about the future and the other interpreted her dreams.”

“But, Sam, Ben isn’t any of those things. Never has been. I mean, he really likes science, and his taste in music is awesome, but he’s not genius level in anything, except maybe in kicking my ass in darts.” Dean rubs at his temple with his thumb, wincing. “Well, until now.”

“I know. That doesn’t fit the pattern either. All of the kids had exhibited their abilities since early childhood, but Ben’s talents seem to have been latent. And the mojo that’s keeping you from questioning Ben’s healing abilities doesn’t seem to cover the new abilities.” Sam considers a minute. “Are you sure there’s nothing else, no other abilities that he has manifested?” 

“I only lived with them a year, and if I saw anything, I probably couldn’t tell you what. This is some heavy duty mind voodoo.” Dean presses the heel of his hand to his forehead again, squeezes his eyes shut. “My head is fucking pounding.”

“Want some aspirin or something?”

“No, just give me a minute.”

The noise of the flock in the trees suddenly hitches in volume, their raucous cries echoing in the silence; both he and Dean look in that direction, startled. 

“So, let’s say that Ben is connected to those other kids somehow,” Dean says after a moment. “If so, why wasn’t he a target back then? Cicero isn’t that far out from Indianapolis.”

“I don’t know. The only connection they had was that they were all born in the same hospital, with the same attending physician. A Dr. David Lawrence. He happened to be a world renowned fertility specialist. All of their parents had gone to him for help.”

“And you think the doctor might have done something to the kids?”

Sam shrugs. “It’s a possibility, but like I said, the trail had gone cold, and the doctor went missing not long after the last murder.”

A couple more crows swoop in to join the flock in the trees; they seem to be having a party up there, cawing and screaming at each other. Sam frowns, idly wondering what’s got them so riled up.

“But Lisa didn’t visit a fertility specialist to get Ben.”

“I know. Which is why I need to go to Indianapolis. Whatever is going on with him, whatever happened to Lisa, it’s connected to the other children somehow. It can’t be a coincidence.”

Dean sniffs, looks out into the crow infested trees with a frown. “With the way our lives go, I know it’s not a coincidence.”

The car shimmies suddenly against Sam’s back, and the muffled sound of violent coughing comes drifting out. Dean opens the door; Ben is sitting up, hacking into the bend of his elbow.

“Come on out here and get some fresh air.”

Ben climbs out, stumbles over to the edge of the asphalt, and spits a mouthful of mucus into the dry grass. 

“Gross, dude,” Dean says

Ben shoots him a dirty look as he wipes his mouth. His eyes are bleary with sleep. “It’s disgusting. How do people even stand this?”

“We manage.” Dean waves him back over. “Come here.” Ben obediently comes back to them, rubbing at his eyes sleepily, lets Dean feel his head. “Damn fever’s still hanging on.”

Ben pulls away. “I’m okay. It’s just a fever.” He shoots a greedy look at Dean’s bottle of water. “Can I have some of that?”

“You can have mine.” Sam grabs the bottle off the roof of the car, offers it to Ben. “I haven’t opened it.”

Ben squints against the sun to give Sam a grateful half smile. “Thanks.”

He leans against the car between them, takes off the cap, and slings it into the scrub just like Dean, same flick of his wrist, same tilt of his head as he watches it sail into an opening in the yellowed creeping vines, a perfect hole in one. He’s like a little clone of Dean, from the troubled frown turning down their mouths right down to the way they lean against the car, one hand shoved into a front pocket. 

Sam can’t decide if it’s cute or creepy.

“That’s a lot of crows,” Ben says, just as something black swoops low overhead. Sam ducks reflexively – they all do – and when he looks up, there’s a huge crow a few feet away, flapping its wings as it settles. It turns one beady eye towards them, blinks once then caws.

They all jump.

“What the hell?” Dean has his gun out and aimed at the bird. Dean’s never been much of an animal person, and Sam knows he’s on edge, but the whole scene is pretty damned ridiculous.

Sam grins at his brother. “Are you really going to shoot a crow, Dean?”

“Yes, when it’s getting fucking aggressive.”

Ben grabs Deans arm, apparently concerned that Dean really would shoot it. “Dean, please don’t. It’s just a bird.”

Dean looks down at Ben, takes in his expression of distress. “Yeah, all right,” he mutters, looking chagrined, and tucks the gun back into his jacket.

The crow rustles its feathers, takes a couple hops towards them. Sam has the irrational thought that the crow does seem a little too fearless, a little too aggressive. He is suddenly itching to pull out his own weapon, but it’s just a crow. 

Then the crow _screams_.

Sam starts, his stomach dropping, and does go for his own gun, tucked into the small of his back. In the distance, the cawing doubles in answer. Sam snaps his head up and sees the entire murder rising into the sky in one huge black cloud. There’s hundreds of them, more birds than he has ever seen at once, diving and wheeling, merging into a huge swirl of black wings above the trees.

“Uh,” Sam says, keeping the Taurus aimed at the crow. “I think we should go.” 

“Yeah. Just a bird, my ass.” Dean opens the back door of the car, the 1911 in his hand again. “Come on, Ben. In.”

Ben doesn’t move.

The crow hops closer, and Sam shoots the ground next to it. It screams at him in indignation and launches itself into the air.

“Ben?” Dean says, voice tight. “Ben, man, come on. Get in the car.”

Sam glances over his shoulder. “Shit, Dean. There’s something wrong.” 

Ben is staring sightlessly into the swarm of crows as it heads right for them like some kind of Hitchcockian nightmare. His pupils are tiny pinpricks, his face slack. 

Dean grabs him by the shoulders and whirls him around, gives him a good shake. “Ben!”

“They’re falling.” Ben can hardly be heard over the sound of the flapping of wings, the mad screaming of crows. Above them they are organizing into a cyclone, dappling the sunlight with their wings. A few swoop low, not too close but far too close for Sam’s comfort. He keeps his gun aimed skyward, not really sure what kind of protection a single clip of bullets can do against an immense swarm of birds.

“Dammit, Ben. Snap out of it!” Dean’s voice has gone thick and raspy with terror.

“The stars are falling from the sky.” Ben’s voice is distant and strange. “He’s done it. He made them fall.”

Dean gives Ben another teeth rattling shake. “Ben!” 

That does it. Ben blinks and refocuses on Dean. “What?”

Dean doesn’t waste any time. He just hauls Ben back by a fistful of green jacket and shoves him into the back seat. 

“Sammy, get in the damn car,” he shouts as he hustles around to the driver’s side.

Sam feels for the door handle, never taking his eyes off the flock, keeping his gun at the ready. He doesn’t look away until he’s in the Impala, legs scrunched up under the dash, and by then, the birds are dive bombing the Impala, their black bodies dropping like anvils but pulling up before they hit. Dean swears violently and guns it, tossing all of them to the side as he peels out of the parking lot, tires squealing and throwing up smoke.

The crows don’t follow, and two or three miles down the road, when it seems like they are in the clear, Dean starts shouting.

“Ben, what the hell was that?”

Ben is white as a sheet, huddled down in the back seat, shaking head to foot. “Remember how you asked me if I was having visions?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I think I am now.”

* * *

The visions roll over Ben again a couple of hours later, while Dean is weaving in and out of cars on the interstate, slipping quickly in front of one car before sliding in front of another, and Sam is bitching at him to slow down, they can’t outrun anything if they’re dead.

It’s like with the wounds and bruises. He can still see the real world: Dean and Sam are in the front seat, the other cars are sliding behind them as the Impala speeds past -a boxy red Scion, a white minivan, a junky Honda Civic. The trees line each side of the interstate in a dense wall of green, interrupted by a billboard advertising that a Big Ryan’s Gas and Sip is at the next exit and a green interstate sign indicating that Nashville is 38 miles ahead.

But overlying that is the phantom image of some other place, a lab of some kind, - no, a morgue - with shiny silver tables and shiny metal scalpels and shiny metal refrigerator units along one wall. There’s a man on the table, pasty and bloated and dead, and a blue hand print is seared into his arm like the not-there hand print on Dean’s shoulder, the finger marks curled around the man’s wrist.

Ben knows that blue handprint means death.

“They have blue hands.” The words come out on their own, sort of bubbling up out of him.

From a great distance, he hears Dean say, “What was that, Ben?”

“Blue hands,” he replies, can’t help but to reply. “Don’t let them touch you with their blue hands.”

In his double vision, Dean looks back over his shoulder while the image flickers to a new image, a guy with dark hair, lying dead on a marble floor with his eyes burned out.

“Shit. It’s happening again,” Dean says even as in the vision, he shouts, “Kevin!”

Dean, the real world Dean, guns the engine, whips around a silver Prius, and pulls off onto the shoulder of the road, the Impala shuddering over the rumble strip. The angry blare of a horn zooms past them and fades into the distance. Dean practically climbs over the seat to get to him. The phantom wound on his side is spurting phantom blood all over the back of the seat as Dean leans towards him, and the inflamed hole over his heart looks a lot worse than it had that morning, practically glowing bright red.

In his double vision, the dead guy on the marble floor becomes a night sky, a familiar sight from his dreams, and rising to block out the glittering spread of the stars, the terrifying bat wings. He can’t see the creature attached to them, but they must be huge to support wings that big. Big and hungry; for the first time, he can hear the crunch and grind of bone as they eat.

“Ben?” Dean’s hands are on him, on the sides of his face, warm and gentle and trembling just a very little bit.

“Leave him be, Dean,” Sam says, gentle and sad. “He just has to ride it out.”

The car rocks as a semi blasts by them, and another vision rolls over him, the familiar, reoccurring image of Sam crouching next to a mattress, the wall behind him covered with strange symbols, black lines marking a white wall. A scattered mass of books lie tossed one over the other. Sam sorts through them, stacking them haphazardly to his left until he finds a green one, the pages brown with age, and peeling sliver duct tape holding the binding together-

“Ben!” Dean says, shaking him hard. “Look at me!”

Ben starts and blinks, and the double image is gone. It’s just the leather and upholstery scent of the car interior, and Dean leaning over the seat getting phantom blood all over the place and the roar of cars rocketing past them on the interstate.

“I’m fine.” It’s not really true. Ben is really, unbelievably scared, but it’s somehow worse seeing Dean so scared. The phantom blood is forming a small lake around Ben’s feet, and he’s starting to understand what that wound on Dean’s side represents. It’s confusing and in some ways, more terrifying than anything else that is happening. It makes everything seem completely out of his control. “I’m okay.”

“You sure?” 

“Yeah.”

Dean rubs his head affectionately and backs out of Ben’s space, dropping back into the driver’s seat, one elbow up on the back of the seat bench.

“You going to tell us what you saw?”

What could it hurt? It doesn’t exactly involve the not-doctor, plus he’s already told them about the wounds and the sicknesses.

“I saw a dead body. In a morgue, I think. A man. He had a blue handprint on him. Sort of burned into his skin.”

Sam’s face scrunches in confusion. “A blue handprint?”

Ben nods. “And-“

“There’s more?” Dean does not look happy about that.

“Yeah.” He describes Sam in the room covered with symbols, the old green book with the duct tape on the binding.

Sam twists around in the seat and drops an arm over the back, mirroring Dean. “You saw this?” 

“Been seeing it for a while, actually. It’s one of my recurring dreams.”

“Recurring, huh?” Yeah, Dean’s pissed. “What else is recurring?”

“Well, I used to dream about a playground. But that happened already.”

“What happened on the playground?” Sam says.

“I just slept there one night. In one of the big plastic tunnels kids can climb through.”

“Is that all?” Dean asks like he doesn’t quite believe Ben. “You just slept there?”

“Yeah.” They don’t need to know that that was the first time he told the dreams to show him how to find Dean or what had happed just before he climbed up into the tubes. “I haven’t dreamt about it since.”

“Okay.” Dean makes a rolling motion with one hand. “What else?”

“In one dream, I get gold and red paint all over my hands.”

They both look extra confused by that one, and Sam says, “Gold and red paint?” 

Ben shrugs. “I told you they don’t make sense until they happen.”

“Fair enough,” Dean says. “Anything else?” 

Ben shifts uncomfortably, remembering the crunch and grind of bone. “The wings.”

Sam and Dean share a significant look. “The wings?” Sam says.

“They’re huge. And they block out the stars.” Ben tilts his head, looks between them, curious. “Are there things with wings big enough to do that?”

Sam and Dean share another look, this one very worried. They keep doing that; it’s some kind of weird sibling thing where they have a conversation entirely in eyebrow lifts and head tilts. Mom and Aunt Sarah do it – used to do it - all the time. As an only child, Ben finds it kind of annoying.

“Yeah,” Sam says grimly. Now he looks about as displeased as Dean. “There are. What do the wings look like?”

Ben thinks on it a minute. “Really big bat wings, I guess?”

“Not angels, then,” Sam says to Dean.

“Small mercies,” Dean replies.

“Have you guys actually seen angel wings?” Ben knows about the angels, if he could count the gruff _yeah, there are angels, but they’re dicks and never agree to do anything for them_ from Dean the one time he had mentioned Castiel in front of Ben.

“Not really, but we’ve heard them.”

“Oh,” Ben says, disappointed. He had always sort of imagined them looking like Tilda Swinton’s in _Constantine_. “That’s it, though. All the recurring ones.”

No need to tell them about the other one, the one in the Impala with Dean. He was going to work very hard to make sure that one never happens. 

Dean just looks at him a minute, that phantom wound on his temple beginning to trickle phantom blood again.

“All right then,” Dean says and turns back around. He yanks the gear shift out of park. “Blue hand prints, red and gold paint, and giant bat wings. Awesome.”

The Impala’s engine roars back to life, and at the next major gap in the flow of cars, Dean pulls it back into traffic, pushing it up to and past the speed limit once again.

The image of Sam picking up the green book slides across Ben’s vision again, followed by the image of Dean grinning behind the wheel of the Impala and Ramble On playing in the background, then the now familiar image of red and gold paint spilling over his hands, then Sam and the book again.

Ben closes his eyes and just lets them come.

When Ben looks up to see the demon staring at him across the dinner table, he nearly chokes on his green beans.

He doesn’t know how he knows it is a demon, he just does. It’s transparent, a second face overlaying Bill’s, twisted and rotting, empty sockets for eyes, the flesh of one cheek torn away to reveal teeth and torn muscle oozing black pus. What else can it be but a demon?

He doesn’t know what to do at first. Dinner is a nightmare. Aunt Sarah keeps trying to pull him into conversation like she has been trying to do for the past two days, Lucy keeps throwing her green beans on the floor demanding yogurt, and Bill just watches it all with his usual smirk, except this time, there’s an edge to it, hard and sharp, and only Ben can see it.

But the night goes on normally, and Bill keeps acting like his usual douche bag self – leaving Sarah to clean the kitchen and take care of Lucy while he watches TV, beer in hand – so Ben plays with Lucy, kisses her booboos, both real and imagined, about a million times while Sarah does the dishes. At eight o’clock Lucy goes up to bed, at 9:30, Ben is encouraged to do the same. He goes without protest, even though he doesn’t want to leave the demon alone with Aunt Sarah. He doesn’t seem to have a choice, though, not if he doesn’t want the demon to know he’s onto him. But if Ben’s right, and he’s the target, then Sarah and Lucy should probably be okay. 

He hopes.

He waits until everyone is asleep – or so he assumes, do demons even sleep? – and sneaks downstairs to use the computer. Every little creak, every pop and sigh of the house makes him jump, makes him look over his shoulder, expecting demon Bill to be standing right there, watching him. 

Ben is surprised by how much about demons and demon possession he finds online. He only vaguely remembers the symbol Dean put under the rugs in front of the doors when he lived with them, and Ben was too freaked out to pay much attention to the exorcism he used on his mom, but he finds them pretty easily, so easily he worries that this is the wrong information, which will get him and probably even Aunt Sarah and Lucy and Bill killed, but he doesn’t have much of a choice.

The symbol – the devil’s trap, according to the webpage – looks like Dean’s did, at least, and the exorcism, well, okay, he doesn’t know Latin, but there’s a recording he listens to four or five times, so at least he’s got an idea of how it should sound. But even if it doesn’t work, the devil’s trap will, so Ben goes with what he has.

He figures that’s what Dean would do.

He clears the history and the cookies in the browser then spends the rest of the night making preparations. By the time he collapses into the guest room bed, door locked, chair jammed up under the door, it’s four in the morning and he has some kind of plan. He even manages to get a few hours of restless sleep full of the usual useless glimpses of the future - a playground with bright colored climbing tubes against a darkening sky, the green book and its duct taped binding, gold paint spilling over his hands, Dean’s startled and guilty expression in the glow of the Impala’s dash, giant black wings extending over his head, blocking out the stars - before Aunt Sarah is calling up the stairs that breakfast is ready.

Ben pulls on his jeans, a t-shirt, his hoodie. He brushes his teeth, adds his toiletry bag to the backpack he had packed before he went to bed. He double checks that he has his mom’s ATM card and the cash that was in her purse (Aunt Sarah had just left it sitting there in the office, and he figures Mom wouldn’t mind, all things considered), makes sure all the print outs from last night have gone in, too, then very carefully folds up the exorcism and stuffs it in his front jeans pocket.

Downstairs, Lucy is already in her booster seat, shoving a fist full of scrambled egg into her face. Aunt Sarah starts making a plate for him as soon as she sees him, going on about how she might call her friend Crystal and ask her to watch Lucy while she and Bill and Ben go see a movie. Would he like that?

“Sure, Aunt Sarah,” Ben says to appease her. It’s not that Ben doesn’t appreciate her attempts to help him get through Mom’s disappearance, he really, really does, but he’s got a bigger and more immediate problem than Mom’s disappearance right now, as awful as that is.

And the bigger problem comes sauntering into the kitchen not three seconds after Sarah sets a plate loaded with eggs and bacon and toast in front of him.

“Hey Benjy, how’s it shaking?” Bill says, ruffling his hair as he passes.

Ben jerks away from him, always annoyed when the real Bill does the same thing, and just plain pissed when the demon does it. Ben carefully keeps his eyes on his scrambled eggs so he doesn’t have to see the twisted, oozing face overlaid on Bill’s, but he watches out of the corner of his eye as Not-Bill circles the island, kisses Aunt Sarah on the cheek, and pours himself a cup of coffee.

Sarah begins to make him a plate, chattering all the while about what they should do today, they can leave Lucy with Crystal so they can go see a movie, what does Bill think?

“Sure, hon, whatever you want to do.” Bill plops down at the other side of the table next to Lucy, who tries to get his attention by holding out a handful of scrambled egg and saying Daddy repeatedly, but as usual, Bill ignores her. Ben is starting to wonder if maybe Bill hasn’t been a demon all along. 

“Sound like fun, sport?” He winks at Ben over the rim of his coffee cup, and that’s when Ben knows the demon is perfectly aware that Ben is onto him.

Ben tightens his grip on his fork, resists the urge to stab the demon in its black, empty eye. “Yeah. Sure.”

The morning crawls along endlessly while Ben waits for his opportunity. First a tense breakfast where Aunt Sarah chatters on and on, and Lucy throws most of her food on the floor, and Not-Bill smirks a lot with his transparent skeleton grin. Sarah finally shoos them out of the kitchen to clean up, and Ben parks himself at the dining room table where he can see Bill watching ESPN in the den. He pretends to play his Gameboy, but mostly, he just watches Bill, who he knows is waiting for Sarah to be gone as much as Ben is. 

Sarah, oblivious to the mounting tension and the demon sitting in front of the TV, carries on as usual, cleaning the kitchen, bathing Lucy, making arrangements for the movies later. Finally she comes downstairs with a bundled up three-year-old and announces that she’s going to take Lucy over to Crystal’s, she’ll be back in a little while, and they should be ready to go when she gets back.

As soon as Ben hears the garage door closing, he’s out of his chair and in the formal living room where Aunt Sarah’s ornate and very large oriental rug covers most of the floor.

He can hear the demon moving around too, looking for him. The wood floor in the dining room creaks under his weight, his bare feet slap on the kitchen tile; in the den, the announcers drone on to an empty den about some basketball prodigy’s hoop shot.

“Hey, Uncle Bill?” Ben calls. “Could you come in here for a minute?”

Not-Bill appears in the doorway, hands in the pockets of his khakis, looking non-threatening and pleasant except for its horrible, oozing face.

“What’s up, Benny?” It’s like the demon knows exactly which of Bill’s nicknames irritate Ben the most. “You know Sarah doesn’t like anyone to come in here.”

“You can stop pretending now.” Ben’s voice is trembling a little, which is kind of embarrassing, but also okay, considering what a coward he’d been last time he had encountered a demon. “I know what you are, and you need to let Bill go.”

Not-Bill cocks his head to the side, and Bill’s eyes, his real eyes, go black. “You don’t say.” He takes a few steps into the living room, and Ben takes several steps back to match the distance. “Smart kid, smarter than Bill seems to think. How’d you know?”

“I can see your real face.” Ben glances downward; the demon is standing on at very edge of the rug, but not on it yet. That’s a problem.

“You can see me? Interesting side effect.” Not-Bill takes another step forward and Ben matches again; the demon is finally on the rug. “Why don’t we make a trade then? Your Uncle Bill in exchange for that pretty glowing orb in your–“

Ben has a moment of vertigo, the room and not-Bill sort of swooping around him, and the sunlight is just so pretty, dancing on the ceiling, reflecting off of the kitchen faucet, and then he’s back again, and the demon is still talking, and Ben wonders how exactly he had lost track of what it was saying at a time like this.

“Although,” the demon is saying thoughtfully, oblivious to Ben’s momentary zone out, “you might not want him back, if his opinion of your aunt and cousin is anything to go by. Sarah’s just a trophy wife, a pretty face to give him a few rugrats and make him look like a good family man at the firm. He can’t stand her, but the hot little piece on the side that he’s keeps set up in a fancy apartment in Indianapolis makes it bearable.”

“Shut up,” Ben snaps. Bill is a douche, but he can’t be that much of a douche, right? But he remembers how Dean had told him not to listen to the things the demon possessing his mom had said, and that probably applies here, too.

“You have no idea what kinds of things this dick has running through his head about Lucy, though.” The demon clucks his tongue in disappointment just like Bill does, shaking his head and taking a few casual steps forward. “He thinks Lucy is a spoiled brat and wishes she didn’t have his DNA. He’s starting to regret agreeing to have her. She’s enough to make him consider a divorce.”

Ben forces himself to remember Dean’s voice, telling him not to listen, and risks another quick glance at the floor. Almost there. He moves back, almost all the way to the couch on the far wall, hoping the demon will follow.

“Oh yeah, Bill’s a real piece of work, but tell you what.” Not-Bill breaks out into a full out grin, its superimposed skeleton’s grin wide and gaping. “You give me what I’m asking for, and I’ll take care of Bill as a courtesy. Your aunt will get a nice insurance settlement, and Lucy can grow up without any crippling Daddy issues. What do you say, Ben?”

“Fuck you,” Ben snaps, though in a hysterical little corner of his mind, he frantically wondered how much saying ‘fuck’ will cost him in the swear jar. 

“Yeah. I had a feeling you’d say that. I’ve had about enough of this.” And the demon darts forward, grin twisting with gleeful malice. Startled, Ben stumbles backwards, fear leaping in his chest; the back of his legs hit the couch and he topples backwards in a sprawl of limbs, and the demon is right there -

Not-Bill jerks to a stop, kind of bouncing backwards off the invisible barrier of the devil’s trap like a cartoon character.

“You little shit.” There’s nothing pleasant about Not-Bill anymore. It looks up, obviously looking for the devil’s trap. “It’s not on the ceiling. Under the rug?”

Ben doesn’t answer him. He carefully levers himself off the couch, and fishes the exorcism out of his front pocket. He unfolds it and begins to read.

The demon smirks. “You’re going to exorcise me, sport? Really? Think you’ve got the balls?”

Ben’s answer is to keep reading.

“There’s no need to get nasty, Ben. Look, I’m sorry I lost my temper. Just let me take it out of you, and I’ll leave you alone.” The demon’s words falter, and he twitches, his head snapping from one side to the other and back again with a violent, unnatural twist.

“Seriously, stop reading. I could care less about you or your pathetic aunt and that screaming brat. I just want the-” 

Ben reads louder, ignoring Not-Bill, whose head violently jerks to the side again. 

“I don’t know why you’re bothering to protect it, Ben. It’s going to kill you.” It’s shouting now, nearly screaming over Ben’s choppy Latin, and Ben’s volume is rising too. “Do you hear me, boy? It’s going to eat your-“

The demon’s words choke to a stop as Ben shouts out the last few words, and Bill’s head snaps back. The black smoke erupts from his mouth with a roar, flowing up and out, slithering through the fireplace and up through the chimney like a snake. Bill’s body goes down like a sack of potatoes, landing with a loud, meaty thump, arms and legs sprawled at awkward angles.

And then there’s just silence. Ben just stands there for a long time trying to get it together, sucking in great big lungfuls of air, his whole body shaking uncontrollably. Noises drift in from outside, a car door slamming, some kids across the street screaming, a lawn mower puttering away. The announcers are now talking about some team’s chances in the play offs in the other room, and the grandfather clock that had once belonged to Ben’s grandmother is ticking away steadily in the hallway.

It comes to him slowly. He has just exorcised a demon.

And Bill hasn’t moved.

“Bill?” Ben says.

No response, not even a twitch of an arm or hitch of breath.

“Uncle Bill?” He approaches slowly, his heart nearly pounding out of his chest, his whole body drenched in sweat. “Can you hear me?”

Nothing.

Ben’s breath is coming in shallow terrified pants as he bends, slowly reaching for the pulse point on his neck. He’s almost too terrified to touch him, but he does because that’s probably something else Dean would do.

Bill’s skin is as cold as ice. No breath. No pulse.

Dead.

Ben snatches his hand away like it’s on fire.

What is he going to say to Sarah when she comes back from taking Lucy to her friend’s to find Bill dead on the floor? Or worse, what if she comes back and she’s possessed? And Lucy, can he really leave Lucy in this situation where her mom might be possessed? She’s only three.

The only thing to do, the only thing he can think of to do, is find Dean. Maybe if he goes now like he planned, no other demons will come here, maybe they’ll leave Aunt Sarah and Lucy alone if Ben isn’t here to endanger them.

Yeah. Maybe.

Maybe doesn’t feel like it is good enough, but maybe is all he has.

“I’m so sorry, Uncle Bill,” he whispers.

Ben hustles upstairs, stuffs the printouts of the exorcism back into his backpack, and runs for it.

By the end of the day, he’s two states away.


	6. Chapter 6

Sam coughs up a glob of blood just before they separate in Nashville.

It comes out of nowhere, a sudden, deep flutter in his throat, and then he’s bent over, one hand braced on the fender of the rental car he’s packing, spitting blood on the ground next to the rear tire. It gleams wetly under the bright parking lot lights, a black splatter against the asphalt.

Behind him, the back door of the Impala creaks open and quick footsteps approach him; when he turns around, the back of his hand pressed against the blood smeared on his lips, he finds Ben, nose and cheeks ruddy with cold, looking excessively healthy against the memory of the miserably sick kid he had woken as that morning. Ben studies him, assessing whatever wound or disease he is seeing on Sam’s soul with a sharp eye, and he looks so like Dean swallowed up in his jacket with that grim assessing look on his face that Sam actually braces himself for a miniature version of Dean’s mother henning. 

But all Ben says is, “Your lungs are bleeding, Sam,” and sounds so confused and shaken up that Sam finds himself mildly ashamed to have expected so much from a frightened thirteen year old kid who had only that morning woken up with super powers. But, after Ben’s insight into the scar on his palm, he couldn’t help being stupidly hopeful for an answer even an angel hadn’t been able to give. 

“Yeah,” Sam says, and turns away to spit the salty copper taste out of his mouth. A harsh burn is lingering in his throat and chest, a new and frightening development. “I know.”

“What’s wrong with you?” Ben’s voice is soft, gentle, and Sam feels Ben’s hand on his arm, light and hesitant. 

Sam wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, trying to get himself a little more put together for Ben’s sake. The burn in his chest is easing off and fading out. When Sam turns back, Ben drops his hand quickly and moves away skittishly.

“I don’t know what it is.” Sam leans back against the car, rubs his knuckles on his sternum. Mercifully, the burn in his chest is completely gone, now. He hopes there’s no repeat. “You can’t tell, can you?” 

Ben shakes his head. “No. I can’t see what’s causing it, just the blood.” He shrugs and ducks his head. “Sorry.”

Castiel had said Sam was damaged in ways even he couldn’t heal, and here was Ben who had been diagnosing other people by sight all day, telling him he can’t see the cause, only the symptom. Sam can’t say he’s surprised; that hypothetical Winchester curse he and Dean were pondering seems to be in full effect.

“I’ll be okay. Just don’t tell Dean. He gets-”

The corner of Ben’s mouth quirked. “Super, insanely overprotective?”

The corners of Sam’s mouth twists up a little, too. “Something like that.”

“Tell me what?”

Of course, Dean has to appear out of nowhere right then, ambushing them with his inconvenient ninja skills, a pair of plastic bags from the Walgreens across the street swinging in his hands. He takes one look at Sam, sidling to the left to hide the blood on the pavement, glances briefly at Ben’s shifty expression – Sam makes a mental note to never, ever use Ben in a con - and says, “You’re coughing up blood, again.” 

Sam sighs. “Dean, come on, don’t start.”

Dean’s eyes cut to Ben. “You see what’s wrong with him?”

Ben shakes his head, nervously peering up at Dean askance. “No. I don’t know what it is. Sorry.”

“S’all right.” Dean ruffles his hair. “I didn’t really expect you to.”

Ben looks relieved, like he was expecting Dean to be disappointed.

“Here,” he says, handing the bags to Ben. “Give me and Sam a minute, okay?” 

Ben eyes them both dubiously, but takes the bags and slinks back to the Impala. Dean grabs Sam by the arm and leads him further along the row of rentals, just out of Ben’s earshot and not an inch further. 

“Look, Sammy,” Dean says, putting Sam’s back to the Impala so he can keep one eye on Ben, “maybe you shouldn’t go.”

“Dean, don’t.”

“Don’t what, Sam?” The storm clouds are gathering around Dean. “Let you go running off after a three year old memory of a hunt you weren’t really even there for while you’re coughing up blood?”

“No, man, don’t choose me over your own kid.”

Dean flinches, and surprise flashes across his face. Sam has never broached the subject before, partially because he is pretty sure Dean was completely serious when he threatened to break his nose if Sam ever brought up Lisa and Ben again, but mostly because it seemed pointless to try since the Braedens no longer even remembered Dean. But every action Dean had ever taken towards them, even that idiotic mind wipe, had been the direct result of his belief that Ben is his kid. Sam knows it, Dean knows it, and if Lisa was as sharp and understanding as Sam suspects she was, she knew it too. 

Dean being Dean, though, just digs his heels in and keeps to his self-imposed party line of denial. “Lisa said-“

Sam cuts him off, impatient now with the whole charade. “I know what she said, but we both know she was lying. I wouldn’t have made you promise to go to them after I jumped into the Pit if I didn’t think so, and I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t have let you in if you weren’t his father.”

“Sammy-“ Dean says, pleading. But no, Sam’s not letting him out of this one.

“Are you telling me he’s not yours?” Sam motions back towards the car, at Ben sitting in the front seat, door open, one foot out on the asphalt, one of the drugstore bags open on his lap while he does a very bad job of pretending he isn’t trying to eavesdrop. “Because tell me he’s not, and I’ll drop it. We’ll handle it like a regular case, make sure he gets back to his aunt-“

“Jesus, Sammy. Stop.”

The look on Dean’s face is pained. Broken. Sam gets that having Cas mind wipe Ben and Lisa was, despite the boneheaded stupidity of it, Dean’s way of letting them go, giving them a safe, normal life. Making the sacrifice, because God knows Dean doesn’t feel like he’s proving how much he loves someone unless he’s sacrificing himself somehow. Dean had managed to talk himself into believing that once Ben and Lisa had forgotten him, they would be out of danger, and God help him, Sam had let him. But Ben is a Winchester, and their luck just doesn’t run that way. Even if Dean had never come into their lives, sooner or later, something would have come for Ben. 

“You’re getting a second chance here, man. Don’t choose me over him. I can’t live with that.”

Dean glances back at Ben, rubs his hand over his mouth, looks away again. “This isn’t really the time.”

“I know. But I’m going to Indianapolis, and you’re going to let me.”

“Sam, you just coughed up half a lung, and you remember what Cas said about what’s happening to you?”

“It was just a mouthful of blood, and it was the first in a week. I think I can manage a few days without dropping dead. You are going to let me do this for you, got it? Because if I don’t come out on the other side of these trials-”

“Shut up, Sam.” Dean’s voice is hard and flinty, and Sam shuts up, though he is tempted to argue. He knows that tone of voice. Dean’s at the edge of his limit, looking down into the abyss, and it wouldn’t take much for Sam to end up hog tied in the trunk for the next twelve hours and kept on lockdown in the Bunker for the rest of his life.

“Dean, just, he’s your kid. I let you leave them before because I was a soulless robot, just... let me fix this, okay?” 

“Fix this?” Dean runs his hands across his face again. “You weren’t the one that broke it.”

But he was. He can remember watching Dean through Lisa’s window that first night without his soul, and he can remember the ease of walking away, finally free of Dean’s needy, smothering love. But he also remembers the possessiveness, the urge to reclaim lost territory when he finally saw Dean with them a year later, that overbearing protective streak, that shine of self-sacrificing love directed at someone else for the first time in Sam’s life. And so he had lured Dean back into hunting, away from the family Dean had wanted and so justly deserved to satisfy a base sense of ownership, and now, well, look at how things had turned out.

Just one more entry on a long list of ways he had failed Dean, and he is not letting Dean deprive him of his chance to make it right.

“I’m going , Dean.”

“Sam-“ 

“I’ll be okay. I’ll call if there’s a problem I can’t handle.” 

Dean opens his mouth, another not unexpected protest paused on his lips, but his eyes flicker towards the Impala again, and he deflates, nods reluctantly. “Yeah, okay.”

Something inside of Sam eases. Dean had spewed a lot of stupid ideas about how he wasn’t a father at Veritas when she had them tied up in her basement, but he practically raised Sam and he is a natural with Ben, and if anyone is made to be a father, it’s Dean. Sam wants Dean to have that, to have his kid and a home, and if Sam doesn’t come out alive on the other side of the trials, well, he wants Dean to have something to live for.

Dean claps him on the shoulder affectionately, and they walk back to the cars, the trunks still open, waiting for Sam to finish transferring his things. Ben watches them approach, his eyes flickering back and forth between them, lips pressed into a frown, and Sam can’t help wondering what Ben is reading on their souls.

* * *

There is someone in the house, again.

Ben assumes it’s Mom at first, but no, she doesn’t sneak like that, with movements that are just whispers and sighs. He lies in bed, staring up at the glow-in-the-dark stars on his ceiling, paralyzed with fear as he listens to the slightest of creaks on the stairs, to the almost silent snick of a door closing. He isn’t so much worried for himself as he is for Mom, who doesn’t remember what he remembers, who won’t know what’s going on or what to do.

Just the thought of such a danger to her propels him out of bed, puts both of his feet on the cold floor. He is sweating as he turns the doorknob, breath shaky as he eases his door open with as little noise as possible. He pads down the hallway to his mother’s room. She isn’t in there; the bed is made and the room feels still and empty, like she hasn’t been there for a long time.

Ben pulls the shot gun out from under the bed where Dean used to keep it, relieved to find it there still. The feel of it is familiar, the heaviness and the metal-slick barrel and the kick when it fires. It scares him to hold it (he’d shot that guy, a demon, but that demon had been inside that guy, and the guy had been shoved down deep), but it’s his best protection right now. He’ll tolerate the guilt that twists his stomach with that memory if his mom is safe. He’ll do anything, tolerate anything, as long as his mother is safe.

Ben checks the rest of the rooms upstairs, the hall closest, the guest room, the bathroom, and nothing, just that same empty stillness as in his mother’s room. The intruder must be downstairs, so that’s where Ben goes, whole body hot and sweaty with fear.

He slips down the staircase, stepping over that one squeaky stair, shotgun braced against his shoulder. He can hear the intruder again, his footsteps whisper soft in the kitchen, in the dining room, on the tile of the foyer. He follows the faint sounds, noting that things have been moved, a chair pulled out from the dining room table, the foyer closet left partially ajar. All the while, the shot gun grows heavier and heavier in his hands, his terror greater and greater as if it is going to swallow him whole. 

And then in the living room, he finally sees him, just lounging in the giant arm chair Aunt Sarah and Uncle Bill had given them two Christmases ago. He is almost completely hidden by the tall back and its stupid, ugly flower print. Only the very top of his head is visible, but Ben recognizes him anyway. 

He sighs in relief and lowers the gun. “Dean, you scared me.”

Dean doesn’t reply, doesn’t even move. It’s like he hadn’t even heard Ben.

Ben’s stomach drops. “Dean?” 

No answer.

Ben cautiously eases around the side of the chair, heart pounding, worried that he was wrong, that this is the intruder, the stranger at loose in his house. But it is Dean, definitely Dean, in his worn boots and his green jacket, staring intently at the palms of his hands.

“Hey, Dean?”

Dean doesn’t acknowledge him. Slowly, he curls his hands into fists then opens them flat again, like he’s seeing them for the first time. It’s weird. This whole thing is weird.

“Please say something. You’re kind of freaking me out.”

“This is your image of father.” Dean sounds confused, mystified. 

Well, he isn’t the only one. 

“What are you talking about?”

Dean looks up, and it’s like looking into the noonday sun, so much bright light, too much, bursting from Dean’s eyes, searing hot and horrible in its beauty. Ben throws up an arm to protect himself and-

Ben jerks awake.

The house in Cicero, the ugly chair, the weird light – it’s all gone. It’s just the rumble of the Impala and the dark and Dean singing along quietly with a CCR song playing low.

Ben uncurls and sits up, hot and off kilter. His heart is pounding a million miles an hour, and his whole body is sweat-damp, his clothes clinging uncomfortably. His cheek hurts where the zipper of the jacket he had been using as a pillow had been biting into his skin, and he rubs absently at the sting on the side of his face as he tries to get his bearings.

It looks like the middle of the night. The interior of the Impala is dark, lit only by the glow of the dash. They’re on some country road lined with trees and fields and the occasional new subdivision. Something is rattling somewhere inside the car, deep and hidden, Legos, Ben remembers obliquely, and his whole body relaxes, the reality of the waking world chasing away the terror of the dream.

“You all right back there?” Dean glances over the back of the seat. No glowing eyes or anything. Just Dean, fuzzy at the edges where his exhaustion is wearing him thin. 

“Fine.” Ben strips off his hoodie, glad to peel the heat of it away from his skin. 

“Dreaming again?” 

“Yeah.” He plucks restlessly at his t-shirt, pulling some cool air in against his chest. “Just a regular dream, though.”

“No future vision?”

“I don’t think so. I was our old house in Cicero. There was someone downstairs-“ Ben stops, eyes on a brand new, brightly lit gas station as it slides by though he doesn’t actually see it. There had been someone in the house, someone who looked like Dean with sunlight exploding from his eyes. Ben shakes his head, not quite able to make sense of it. “I don’t know. It was weird.”

“Again?” 

“Again? What do you mean again?”

Dean meets his eyes in the rearview mirror. “You don’t remember last night?” 

“No.” He vaguely remembers Dean making him eat something, hot soup, he thinks because he was drinking it, and maybe orange juice, and Sam sort of hanging around in the background somewhere, but he doesn’t remember much else. “What happened?”

“You woke up shouting about someone being in the house in Cicero.” 

Ben tries and fails to remember that. He shakes his head. “I don’t remember.”

“You were pretty out of it with the fever, so I’m not surprised.” Dean pats the seat beside him. “Wanna come up here?”

A hot surge of anger spikes through Ben. He clenches his teeth against it, suddenly blindingly and irrationally furious that Dean is so casually asking him to ride up front when not too long ago he had made Ben forget that the Impala ever existed. 

But Ben doesn’t like how out of control his anger makes him feel, how he really wants to just hit something, better yet someone, as hard as he possibly can, repeatedly and forever, so he swallows it back and pushes it down deep. 

Also, he really does want to ride shotgun. 

“Yeah. Sure,” he says, sounding decently not angry, and climbs over the seat. He halfway slithers into the floorboard before he gets upright again - it’s a lot harder to do this now than it had been when he was 10 – and nearly clocks Dean in the head with his foot.

Dean grabs his ankle to keep his foot from slamming into his face. “Watch it, dude.”

“Sorry,” he mumbles, but not all that repentantly as he manages to get situated in shot gun, pushing the box of tapes aside with his foot and stretching out his legs more comfortably.

They ride in silence for a while. Ben’s anger fades. The Credence song ends and is followed by a Bob Seger song. Dean drums his fingers on the steering wheel and hums along. They pass a subdivision standing out like an oasis of light in the darkness then a half built Wal-Mart followed by another subdivision. It reminds him of Charlotte, of the big gated subdivision there, and the ham and wine and honey, the vampire in the bathroom. He bites his lip, trying to hold up against the curl of unease he still feels about that whole situation.

An annoying commercial about a car dealership comes on; Dean starts punching the buttons and scanning the stations, but there doesn’t seem to be anything but garbled music and static.

“Why don’t you put something in?” he finally says.

Ben nods and drags the box of cassette tapes out of the floor by his feet. He digs around for a minute, unable to find what he’s looking for. “Where’s _Physical Graffiti_?”

Dean glances at the box in Ben’s lap. “Crushed a couple months ago by Sam’s giant foot, and he hasn’t replaced it yet. _Back in Black_ is in there somewhere, though.”

A memory swims up at him - his mother in the exact spot where he is sitting now, flashing a big smile at him. The Impala hadn’t sat in the garage the entire time Dean lived with them. A few times during the spring and summer after Dean came, they took it out for Sunday drives, mom riding shot gun, making fun of Dean’s out of date cassette collection and complaining when they listened to the _Back in Black_ album three times in a row. It hadn’t happened a lot, though. It always seemed to make Dean sad afterwards, probably because of Sam, and the car would spend the next few weeks under the tarp before Dean would even consider looking in her direction again. But those Sunday drives were easily in the top ten of best things about Dean living with them, and now he sort of understands why he had been so sad afterwards, especially if Dean had missed Sam like Ben misses Mom.

Listening to _Back in Black_ without his mother in the car to complain about it isn’t so appealing right now.

“That’s okay. I’m kind of feeling Zeppelin.” He finds _Led Zeppelin II_ and puts it in, since it’s one of Dean’s favorites, and ‘Ramble On’ starts in mid verse.

Dean grins. “Good choice.”

As soon as the words are out of his mouth, Ben is doused with a rush of déjà vu and swimming dizziness. The glow of the dash and the dark beyond the car and Dean’s grin and Robert Plant singing about going around the world – he has seen this moment a hundred times in his dreams, dreaded it more than all the others combined. It’s so hard to breathe; his chest is tight with a swelling urge to cry. His vision is blurring, and Ben swallows thickly, fighting as hard as he can against the tears. He suddenly and violently wants the earlier anger back, the sharp intensity of it, not this pathetic, weak weepiness.

He tries to wipe his eyes on the shoulder of his t-shirt discreetly and ignore the feeling, but there’s this thing, this quiet voice deep inside, pushing at him, telling him to speak, to say the words pooling on the tip of his tongue, he has to do it, he can’t fight it, this is what he had seen... 

Ben tries to ignore the voice, tries to keep the words in and just look out the window and enjoy the ride, because he doesn’t want to have this conversation, not with Dean, not ever. But that voice keeps insisting and the pressure in his chest keeps on building, and then his mouth opens and words just start coming out. 

“Why did you make us forget? Wasn’t leaving enough?” he says it in a rush, the words just spewing out of him. He can’t seem to control them, can’t swallow them back. “If you didn’t want us anymore, you could have just said so.” 

Dean looks in his direction all startled and wide eyed and looks away again. The wound on his side flares to life, the blood gushing out and soaking through all of Dean’s clothing and pooling on the seat within seconds. 

Ben turns his face away, embarrassed by the tears welling in his eyes like he’s a little kid or something. He knew this was coming, but it’s still awful and embarrassing. If Dean didn’t want them, he should be strong enough not to want him back; he shouldn’t have to deal with this on top of losing mom and everything else that’s happening. It isn’t fair. Sometimes he wishes Dean had never lived with them at all.

Dean clears his throat and pops the Zeppelin out of the tape deck. The car falls silent except for the rumble of the engine and that rattle deep in the dash. “How, um, how did you know about that?” 

“Because I dreamed about this,” he mutters, wiping away his tears with the heel of his hand.

Dean sighs, runs his hand over his mouth, his movements quick and jerky. “I was trying to protect you.”

“From what?” Suddenly he’s mad again, like a switch has been thrown, white hot furious. “We forgot everything, Dean. _Everything_! And look what happened. Mom’s just gone, and I don’t even know what’s happening to me.”

“Ben-“ 

“No. Shut up. I’m not done. You didn’t want to be with us any more, fine. But why make us forget? How was that protecting us?”

“I don’t know, Ben.” Dean looks panicked. The phantom blood is still spreading, dripping off the seat into the flood boards, approaching but not quite touching Ben’s leg. Ben doesn’t bother moving; it isn’t real blood, it’s just Dean’s soul leaking from a wound. “Hell, I don’t even know anymore. I just wanted you guys to have a normal life.”

“Maybe we didn’t want to have a normal life.”

“You don’t even know what you’re saying, Ben.” 

“You think I’d want to be a hunter, right?” A new surge of anger wells up; it’s like Dean doesn’t even know him. “Well, I don’t. Ever. After the demons, I want nothing to do with it. I almost lost Mom. Why would I ever want to risk that again?”

“That’s just it, Ben. You risk that just by knowing me. I draw attention to you guys, I put you in danger.”

“And how does making us forget you keep that from happening, exactly? Wouldn’t it make more sense if you made the _monsters_ forget you?”

Dean fixes his eyes on the road and flexes his hands on the steering wheel. The wound on his side is still bleeding, and though the phantom blood never quite touches Ben, it’s running over the edge of the seat, pooling in the foot well. The fuzziness of exhaustion around Dean has sharpened with the adrenaline flooding his body, but that wound on his temple is leaking blood again. He should know what it means, but he can’t quite understand what he’s seeing. The damage it represents goes deep, far deeper than Ben can see, and Ben does not want to know what that can possibly mean.

Ben sighs, suddenly tired, so tired. He slumps in the seat and watches another brightly lit convenience store fly by. “You’re so dumb. We just wanted you to come home sometimes. We knew you had important things to do, and that it might put us in danger, but we thought it was worth it.”

“Didn’t you just say you didn’t want to be in that kind of danger?”

“That’s different,” Ben says, irritated. “And you know it.”

They are both silent for a little while. They come up on an empty intersection and stop for the red light, the silence heavy between them. 

“Putting you and your mother in danger isn’t worth it. Not to me. It will never be worth it,” Dean says, but what Ben actually hears, to his horror, is _I’m not worth it_.

Ben’s throat tightens, and he looks away, embarrassed and confused. He can’t say anything to that, and he doesn’t really want to know it, either. It’s so big, too big. Doesn’t want to have anything to do with it, just wants things to go back the way they were before. 

He leans his temple against the door, and when the light turns green and the car starts moving again, his head rocks against the glass. The world starts picking up speed, rocketing by as Dean pushes the car up and past the speed limit. He closes his eyes and lets the rumble of the Impala lull him back to sleep.

Maybe forgetting was better.

Ben is sitting at the kitchen counter when Lisa gets up, swinging his feet on the barstool. He is still in his Batman pajamas, hair mussed with an awful case of bed head, but he is bright eyed and bushy tailed as he works his way through a package of trail mix, nuts and dried fruit separated out into tiny, alphabetically ordered piles. He’s currently working his way through the chocolate chips, and the cranberries are next.

Lisa sneaks up behind him and plants a wet sloppy kiss on his cheek.

“Mom!” he cries, dragging out the vowel and wiping his cheek off on his shoulder with a scrunched up nose. “Gross!”

Lisa grins and tousles his hair. “Oh, you love it.”

“Do not,” he says, but his eyes are bright, and he’s doing a terrible job of hiding his grin. For a moment, she sees Dean shining out of her son, and has to turn away from the memory of Dean on her front porch only days ago, eyes full of despair.

She opens the refrigerator, considers the contents with more focus than entirely necessarily. “How about some eggs to go with your trail mix? Maybe with some cheese?” 

“But no mushrooms, right?” Ben says solemnly.

“Right,” Lisa says and starts pulling out eggs and cheese and mushrooms for her own eggs out of the refrigerator. “No mushrooms.”

Ben finishes off his chocolate chips and starts in on the dried cranberries as Lisa works, whisking the eggs and heating the skillet. 

“Mom?”

Lisa looks up from her hunt for the spatula, sees Ben is considering a peanut thoughtfully. “Yeah?”

“What does corrupted mean?”

“Corrupted?” Lisa closes the utensils drawer, goes to the dishwasher. “Um, it means, someone or something has been changed for the worse. Like honest cops taking bribes and that kind of thing.”

“Oh.” Ben falls silent again, popping the nut into his mouth. 

Lisa’s found the spatula and is pouring a teaspoon of olive oil into the skillet when Ben speaks again.

“And what’s a vessel?”

Lisa glances over her shoulder, wondering what’s got him thinking so hard and asking vocabulary questions. “A big ship, I guess. Why?”

“Cause that’s what the man in the suit said about me.”

Lisa frowns and turns around. “What man in the suit?”

“The one who was in my room last night.”

Lisa’s stomach plummets. “What?”

“He was yelling at his friend,” Ben says, oblivious to her change in mood. “I guess he was his boss or something. He was really mad because his friend brought him a corrupted vessel. And the other guy kept saying I was from the right bloodlines, but the other one was like, ‘You can’t see the corruption? Michael can’t use a corrupted vessel like this.’”

Lisa’s heart is trying to pound its way out of her chest, but Ben keeps talking.

“And then Catwoman came with this other guy in a white jacket, and they both had a silver bows and silver arrows and she told the men in suits that if they came near me, she would kill them. And then the boss guy called her a – well, I won’t say it because I don’t want to get in trouble, but it was bad. And then he left, and the guy in the white jacket told me to go back to sleep and forget what I had seen.” 

“Ben, are you sure it wasn’t a dream?” She doesn’t know why she says it, maybe to comfort Ben, but deep down she knows it’s to comfort herself. Dean’s recent visit has left her shaken, all that talk about how things would be getting really bad and making sure she and Ben would be okay and how some nebulous but terrifying group of people would have to agree to conditions. She had tried so hard to get him to come inside, had tried so hard to talk him off the ledge....

“I guess it had to be, right?” Ben says after a moment. “I mean, why would Catwoman have bows and arrows? She uses a whip.” He shakes his head. “Weird.”

Lisa turns back to the stove, pours the eggs into the pan on automatic, hands shaking. She doesn’t know why her blood has run cold. It was a dream, had to be a dream, but there’s something inside her, some instinct, some down deep feeling that insists that she shouldn’t just explain it away.

She should call Dean. The thought comes unbidden, sudden and strong, and she almost pulls the skillet off the burner, turns off the stove, and goes to hide in her room to make the call. But then 80 pounds of pure boy energy slams into her, wrapping his arms around her waist and holding tight.

“It’ll be okay, Mommy,” Ben says, blind-siding her with one of his big bear hugs. 

Lisa finds herself relaxing, relishing the feeling of having her little boy right here, next to her, alive and safe. She puts one arm around Ben, squeezes him close. “What will be okay?”

Ben looks up at her, fixing her with solemn eyes. “Whatever is making you sad.”

Lisa nods. “Yeah. Yeah it will,” she says, and makes a mental note to call Dean later just to be sure, just to be safe. Besides, after that terrifying visit, she should have made sure he was okay ages ago.

Lisa feeds Ben some eggs to go with his trail mix, and then there is some fervent whining about going to see a movie, and by the end of the day, she has a kid that’s all smiles and joy and she has gained some perspective on the whole thing. She is admittedly still unreasonably paranoid after the changeling thing, and she’s getting all worked up over a dream that involved Catwoman wielding bows and arrows, for God’s sake.

Besides, Dean said he would make sure they were safe, and she trusts him to protect them. He brought Ben back to her when the changelings took him, and whatever thing he is up against, whatever he was heading off to face after that suicide speech, she knows he’ll keep them safe.

Hindsight really is 20/20.


	7. Chapter 7

Indianapolis is nearly a bust.

The Albrights slam the door in his face, the Sandovals have moved to Phoenix, and Darrell Hancock, the father of the twins who could predict the future, has committed suicide and the mother has long been dead. 

Sam isn’t hopeful when he knocks on the Dixons’ door, his last hope for getting any firsthand accounts. Their daughter, Amy, had been the first victim, murdered about a month and a half after Sam went into the Pit. She had been a musical prodigy, brilliant with the cello and, Sam suspects, in possession of an extremely strong immune system. She was only three months older than Ben. 

Theresa Dixon opens the door, a slender blonde, older than Dean, but not quite middle aged. There’s something fragile about her in her primly pressed slacks and pale pink cardigan, the subtle make up and the perfect manicure. When Sam flashes his FBI badge – he’s Chris Slade this time and very thankful that Dean decided to keep Bon Scott for himself - Theresa seems to age ten years right before his eyes. 

“Look, Agent,” she says calmly, reasonably, “I understand that there have been similar murders in Charlotte recently, but Henry and I have already told the authorities all we can.” 

Sam manages not to flinch in surprise at the mention of more recent murders, manages to roll with it and work it into his cover. “I know, ma’am, but there have been some new leads, and I was hoping you might be able to shed some light on them.”

“New leads?” She fingers the tiny gold cross on the chain around her throat. “So you think it’s the same murderer?”

Sam goes for professional but vague. “We’re looking into all possibilities.”

She glances nervously over her shoulder before she steps back and allows him to enter into the foyer. “I’m not sure how much help we can be. Isn’t our information on file?”

“Yes, ma’am, but sometimes it helps to hear it again first hand, especially in light of new evidence.”

Footsteps come pounding down the stairs. Sam looks up, sees Henry Dixon coming at them, taking two steps at a time. He’s close to Sam’s height, but rail thin, and his pale red hair is riddled with gray. He is as primly dressed as his wife in a button up shirt and a blue sweater vest.

“Terri, is that the UPS guy?” he asks, and when he sees Sam, he stops on the last step. His expression hardens. “Another cop?”

Sam reaches for the ID again. “FBI, actually.” 

“I don’t care.” He goes bright red with anger. “We don’t have any new information for you, just like we haven’t had any new information for you the last half dozen times you guys have showed up in the past-“

“Henry,” Theresa says, cutting him off sharply. “They have some leads from the murders in Charlotte.”

“Terri, I. Don’t. Care. I’m tired of them showing up every few months offering empty hope.”

Theresa’s mouth thins in anger. “May I speak to you in the other room, please?”

Henry glowers at Sam, then follows his wife into the formal living room to their right, shoulders rounded like a little kid about to be scolded. They argue in angry whispers, a harsh, indecipherable susurration. Sam stands in the foyer, having witnessed a similar response far too many times to feel awkward and invasive, and takes the chance to study the foyer, with its high ceilings and black and white tile, the tasteful and probably expensive reproduction of a Renoir, the vase of fresh flowers on the hall table. It’s like something out of those magazines that Jess used to browse through, dog-earing pages and asking Sam how he thought this couch or that paint color might look in a house one day.

There is a cluster of framed photographs on the hall table; Sam moves in to examine them more closely. Three are of Amy – at maybe a year old, face covered in birthday cake, at six or seven, posing with her cello, at ten, grinning next to Mickey Mouse and Cinderella’s castle looming up behind her. There is a photo of Henry and Amy in front of the Eiffel Tower and a photo of a younger Henry and Theresa on the deck of a cruise ship. The last and largest is of wedding party, the bride and groom, three groomsmen with dark blue cummerbunds to their right, and three brides maids in matching blue dresses to their left. 

Sam recognizes the bridesmaid standing closest to the bride.

“I’m sorry about that,” Theresa says, returning to the foyer. Henry skulks in behind her, glowering and resentful. “I have to agree with my husband, we don’t think we can possibly have any other information.”

Sam picks up the wedding photo and shows it to Theresa. “Ms. Dixon, that’s Lisa Braeden.”

Theresa glances at the photo, confused. “Yes. She was my sister’s best friend when they were in college.”

“Were you both aware that she and her son are missing?”

Theresa nods. “Of course. It’s awful. I mean, after my sister and her husband moved to San Francisco, we lost touch with Lisa over the years, but Ben and Amy were only a few months apart, and when I saw the news...”

She trails off, her hand flying back to her necklace and the nervous fiddling. Sam stares at them, at this grieving, heartbroken couple, and knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are lying. They know _something_ , and Sam wants to know what that is.

Generally speaking, people want to talk. When weird things happen to them, when things don’t make sense, when they’ve been hurt or their loved ones have died under mysterious circumstances, they want to talk about it. Most people swallow back the urge and convince themselves that they had just been imagining things, but underneath and deep down, they just want to talk.

His Dad had always said that the three things a hunter depended on the most were research, a good cover, and a witness’s urge to talk. Sam had figured out early on that he was pretty good at getting people to give into that urge and over the years, he had become a good judge of how to get them to do it. Sometimes it took a lot of finesse and gentle handling, sometimes it took being a hard ass and demanding answers; sometimes it took a badge and a few veiled threats about obstructing justice, sometimes it was breaking cover all together.

All of Sam’s instincts are telling him that now was the time to break cover.

“I think it’s time you came clean.” Sam carefully returns the photo to its place on the table. “Both of you. You don’t have any more information to give because you don’t think anyone will believe what you really know. Am I right?”

Their faces are blank with shock, and Sam pushes on, not willing to let Henry get riled up or Theresa to withdraw what little openness to questioning she might have had. 

“I get it. There was something special about Amy, something you felt compelled to hide from people. When she died, you knew it was because she was special. But you couldn’t tell anyone.” 

Sam looks between them, and when they continue to stare at him in shocked silence, he pushes further. “Amy was incredibly healthy, wasn’t she? She never got sick, literally never, and whenever she cut herself, she healed in half the time, maybe less, than other people do. And her musical ability was way beyond talented, to the point that you made her hold back when she played. Am I close?”

“How-“ Theresa pauses, swallows thickly. She has gone deathly pale. “How did you know that?” 

“Look, I’m going to come clean, too. I’m not a federal agent. My name is Sam Winchester. Lisa’s son, Ben, is my nephew.” There is a secret thrill in saying that out loud. “I think he may be in danger from the same thing that killed your daughter.”

Henry flushes, his pale skin going bright red under his multitude of freckles. “How dare you come in here, impersonating a-“

“Henry, shut up.” Theresa’s voice is sharp. “Agent... Mr. Winchester...“

“Sam,” he supplies.

She clears her throat, her nervous, fluttery energy settling into something solid. “Sam, how did you know?”

“Ben heals like that, too.”

A beat of silence while Theresa takes his measure. Finally, she says, “Henry, go get the photo album.”

“Terri, don’t.”

Theresa turns to her husband, a flush of anger spreading down her neck. “I can’t live with this anymore. I can’t keep pretending that we think a _person_ killed Amy when we know otherwise. And if we can keep it from happening to Lisa’s son-“

“Terri-“

“I will tell him whether you agree or not, so you might as well help me give him as much information as we can.” All Theresa’s fragility is gone. “Now go get the photo album.”

Henry’s fury stands out like a halo around him, but his will doesn’t seem to be as strong as his wife’s. “This is a terrible idea. We don’t really know who he is, or even if he can help.”

Theresa turned to Sam. “Can you help?”

“Yes. I think I can.”

She puts her hands on her hips, gives her a husband a challenging look. “That’s good enough for me.”

Henry flinches like she has struck him. He snaps around in a furious pivot and storms down the hall, disappearing into the depths of the house.

Theresa sighs with affectionate longsuffering. “I’m sorry. It’s been very hard for both of us, but Henry has taken it far worse than me.” Her voice is calm, the waspish sting gone. “So, Sam, may I offer you something to drink?”

* * *

“You guys really live here?” Ben is eying the war table and the switch boards below them suspiciously.

“For a while now, yeah,” Dean replies, and starts down the stairs, already relaxing, letting down his guard. The hum of the switchboards and the other machinery has already become a sound he associates with safety and protection and home. Ben will be safe here; he can hide him behind the wards as long as he needs to, can make sure whatever came after him at the clinic can’t get to him again.

Ben’s voice echoes in the high ceilinged room as he follows Dean down. “It looks like Nazi headquarters in the _Last Crusade_.” 

“Yeah, well, you find a secret door that opens into a castle, you let me know,” Dean says over his shoulder as he heads into the library. He drops his duffle on the floor next to the table and scrubs his hands over his face wearily. His eyes are burning with exhaustion, and his bed, his very own, memory-foam covered bed is calling his name. He had pushed through the night with No-Doze and sour gas station coffee so he could get Ben here safely, and now he’s looking forward to a few hours of sleep without having to worry about mystery monsters.

“Does this place even have a normal address?” Ben is still lingering in the war room, examining the gas masks hanging next to the sink. Sam had argued to take them down, bitching that they were morbid, but Dean had insisted they leave them, it gave the place character. 

Dean sighs, irritated. He knows Ben is putting extra effort into being unimpressed, but it still chafes. He’s been excited about showing Ben the Bunker since they hit Topeka. He doesn’t have much to offer to Ben right now, knows he’s in the doghouse, but he was hoping for a little more enthusiasm, because, dude, secret headquarters. What 13 year-old doesn’t want his own secret headquarters? 

Other than Ben, that is.

“That’s what you ask?” Dean pulls off his jacket, takes the angel blade and his gun out of its inside pockets, and slings it over the chair, irritated. “I show you the Batcave, and you give me, ‘does it have an address’?”

Ben wanders towards the war table to look at the map. “Well, does it?” 

“No, it doesn’t have an address.” Dean pops the clip and the chambered bullet out of the 1911. Dean stuffs the bullet back into the clip and shoves it into his back pocket. “It’s like the frickin’ Fortress of Solitude or the Justice League Satellite or whatever.”

Ben shrugs. “Well, I always wondered how they got their mail, too.” 

Dean sighs in defeat. “P.O. box in town.”

“But what if you want to order a pizza?”

“We go pick it up.”

“Do you get cable?”

“Yeah.”

Ben looks up in surprise. “This place has cable?”

“It’s a magic bunker, dude. We get cable, cell phone service, internet, the works.” 

“How?” Ben drifts into the library, eyes roaming over everything like he thinks Dean is having him on.

“As far as we can tell? Magic.”

“I thought magic messes with electronics and stuff.”

“Well, this magic doesn’t.”

Ben frowns thoughtfully and sets his backpack in a chair. He turns in a circle, taking in the books and the objects of interest that decorate the room, the card catalogue and the scimitar swords in their mounting. “Who built this place?”

“A secret society. The Men of Letters. Turns out me and Sam are legacies.”

“What’s a legacy?”

“It means our grandfather was a member, and probably his father and grandfather.” Dean fights the urge to tell Ben that includes him, too. “We would have gotten into the club on that alone, if any of them were still alive.”

“Oh.” Ben is still unimpressed. He leans over to look in a book Sam had left open on the table. It’s in Latin, so Dean isn’t too worried about what he might be reading. “What kind of secret things did they do?”

“Collected occult books and objects and studied them. A little bit of hunting. I’m sure they did other things. We’re still trying to figure that out.”

“So, they were like the Watchers on _Buffy_?”

Dean shrugs. “Yeah. I guess they were.” 

Ben nods absently, like it’s interesting but not _that_ interesting. “Were they expecting a nuclear war or something? ‘Cause, you know,” he gestures back towards the war room, “gas masks.”

“They abandoned it in the fifties, so maybe.” He and Sam had discussed that possibility briefly when they were trying to figure out why they would have gasmasks just hanging around, but then they found the biology lab on level 2, and realized there was probably a good reason for the conveniently placed masks.

Ben notices the hallway. “Are there other rooms?”

“Lots of other rooms. Want to see the rest of the place?” Dean asks in hope that Ben’s interest might improve. His hope is probably in vain, but hope always does that springing eternal thing.

Ben shrugs; vibes of disinterest seem to flow off of him. “Sure.”

Disappointed, Dean leads him down into the maze of hallways they were still trying to decipher. He points out his room and Sam’s, shows Ben the kitchen, and makes sure the kid’s clear on no going into the gun range by himself.

“What’s in there?” Ben asks him on their way to the shower room.

“In where?”

“That room.” Ben points at a stretch of blank wall with a framed photograph of Eisenhower hanging on it. Dean had wanted to take that down, but Sam had insisted that if the gas masks stayed, so did Eisenhower. Contrary bastard. 

Dean stares at Eisenhower. “There’s a door there, isn’t there?”

“You can’t see it?” Ben asks, eyes wide with surprise.

“No.” 

“Huh,” Ben says just like Sam would, then reaches through the wall, turns an invisible doorknob, and disappears.

* * *

The Dixon’s home is a shrine to Amy; Theresa leads Sam through several beautifully decorated rooms where photographs of Amy clutter every surface and trophies fill places where knick knacks or books might have gone. Even the kitchen, with its cooking show counter tops and gleaming stainless steel appliances, photos of Amy Dixon can be found on every surface.

Sam accepts a cup of coffee that he does not drink, noting another cluster of photographs of Amy along the windowsill. Theresa settles across from him at the kitchen table, back ramrod straight.

“Why was Amy special, Ms. Dixon?” 

Theresa’s hand goes to the locket at her throat again and stays there, clutching it like a lifeline. She’s silent for a long moment, brows drawn together in thought.

“You have to understand,” she says at last, an edge of desperation in her voice, an undercurrent of _please, don’t judge us too harshly_. “We were desperate. We tried to have children for years, but no matter what we did, I couldn’t conceive. My doctor finally referred me to a fertility specialist.”

“Dr. David Lawrence,” Sam says.

She fiddles with her locket some more. “Yes. His success rate is – was – well over 80%. But even he couldn’t help us.”

“But he had another option for you?”

She nods reluctantly, shifts uneasily in her chair. “One evening he came here. He said he wasn’t there as our doctor, but he did have another way for us to conceive.” She pauses, her eyes flitting to the pictures of Amy on the windowsill, most of them baby pictures.

“And what was that?” Sam asks when she is silent for too long. 

Her eyes track back to him uneasily. “‘Supernatural means’ was the phrase he used.”

“Supernatural means? Did he specify what those means were?”

“No.”

“Do you remember what he did to you?”

“He didn’t do anything.”

“Terri, don’t.” Henry Dixon appears in the doorway, a red photo album tucked under one arm, his hand curled around the spine in a white knuckled grip.

Theresa sighs wearily. “Just give me the photo album.”

Henry’s expression is mutinous, but he joins them at the table, slamming the photo album down before taking a seat next to his wife.

Theresa ignores the temper tantrum with the patience of someone well acquainted with the behavior. She opens the album and flips through the pages until she comes to a group of wedding photos that match the photo Sam had seen in the foyer. Just at a glance, Sam spots Lisa in many of them, younger, bright eyed, her smile dazzling. Eventually she finds what she’s looking for, a picture of five people crowd into the frame, grinning hugely - the bride and groom, a younger version of the Dixons, and Lisa.

“This is my sister, Anne, and her husband, Todd. You recognize me, and Lisa, of course, but that,” she says, tapping a younger Henry, no graying hair, but still tall and almost comically thin, “is Amy’s father.”

“I’m Amy’s father, Terri,” Henry says quietly.

“Well, her biological donor, then.”

Sam frowns. “I don’t understand.”

“That isn’t me,” Henry says. “I was called in for an emergency consultation in New Orleans, and my flight was delayed due to a tropical storm. I couldn’t get home until the next day.”

“It was something that looked like Henry.”

Sam studies Theresa for a minute. “How did you know?”

“I just knew. I knew the minute I saw it. But I was desperate, and Dr. Lawrence had assured us that no harm would come to me and that no one would ever question her paternity. He was right. She looked just like him, same hair and freckles, same short temper and sense of humor. She even had his blood type, and when we did genetic testing, the results said that she was biologically Henry’s. Anne even joked about how we must have cloned Henry to get her.”

“What can you tell me about it? How did it behave? Did it do anything that drew your attention?”

“Other than looking like my husband when I knew he was in New Orleans?” Theresa shakes her head. “It did nothing out of character. It behaved and spoke just like Henry.” She tucks her chin down, drops her eyes. “In every circumstance, if you know what I mean.”

“Right.” Sam cleared his throat, pushing past the awkward moment. “So, ah, what was the trade off? What did it want in exchange?”

“A sacrifice once a month for as long as Amy was alive.”

Sam’s blood runs cold. “A sacrifice.”

“It isn’t what you think,” Theresa says quickly, no doubt worried he is thinking blood sacrifice of some kind. Which he is. Monsters tend to go for that sort of thing, if they aren’t going for your soul. “We’re good Episcopalians, we are, but I wanted Amy so badly and I was willing to do anything to have her. It was just a bottle of wine and a prayer at sunrise once a month for as long as we were alive.”

“That’s it? Just a libation and a prayer.”

The Dixons nod, looking uncomfortable.

“What was the prayer?”

The Dixons both shift uneasily, and a blush rises in Henry’s cheeks. They seem more embarrassed by their slide into pagan worship than the fact that they passively allowed something that wasn’t human father their child.

“’Acestor, we thank you for the gift of our child, the light and life you have brought to our lives. We offer this libation and gratitude in your honor.’” The recitation flows easily off Henry’s tongue. “And then we would pour the wine out on the ground.”

“Acestor,” Sam says, tasting the name. It doesn’t ring any bells, and he doesn’t immediately recognize its etymology. Libations are common in a wide range of pagan religions, so that doesn’t do much to narrow the field, either. He wonders what kind of thing it is, impregnating infertile women, using a fertility doctor as its broker. He has vague memories of the shape shifter he and Dean hunted when Sam was mind and body but no soul, pretending to be the husband to impregnate the wives, like a cuckoo laying its egg in another bird’s nest. He doubts it was a shape shifter, though; the Dixons would have probably noticed Amy shedding her skin.

So many pieces, and Sam doesn’t quite know how they all fit. 

“Is there anything else you can tell me?” he asks. “Any behaviors it exhibited or if it said anything odd or out of character?” 

Theresa shakes her head. “No, sorry. It was doing a very good job of being Henry.”

“What about that one picture?” Henry asks.

“Which picture?”

“The one with Todd’s grandmother?”

“Oh! Right. I’m not sure why I didn’t think of that before.” Theresa starts flipping back through the wedding pictures. “At one point, I got distracted by my parents and lost sight of it for a while. And when I found it again, well. Here.” She pulls a picture hidden behind a posed picture of the bridal party and slides it across the table to Sam. 

It’s a candid of the bride and groom posing with an elderly woman in a lavender dress, a few other people lingering in the background. “Do you see them? In the background?” 

Sam picks it up for a closer look, and yes, just beyond the bride’s shoulder is Lisa, bright eyed and flushed with wine, her back to the thing masquerading as Henry. Lisa is deep in conversation with someone out of frame, a wine glass grasped loosely in her hand, apparently unaware of the thing that isn’t Henry is watching her with luminous, greedy eyes. Sam had seen vampires look at their prey with less hunger, and he feels a sudden flush fear for this younger version of Lisa who doesn’t have the slightest inkling that monsters exist, let alone that there is one looming at her back.

There’s something about the picture, the gleam of the monster’s eyes. Sam tilts the picture into the early morning sunlight spilling through the kitchen windows for a better look. It seems like Henry’s eyes are gleaming, reflecting gold at the camera, but the shot isn’t clear enough to be sure. It might just be a camera flare, but it might also be an indication of its true nature, like the reflective properties of a shape shifter’s eyes. It’s another clue, another piece of a puzzle that he can’t seem to get a grip on, but he knows there’s a linchpin somewhere, something that will pull it all together if he can just find it.

Theresa’s voice breaks brings him out of his train of thought. “Is there anything else we can do, Sam?”

Sam looks up; the Dixons are watching him expectantly.

Sam shakes his head. “No, nothing.” He holds up the picture. “May I keep this?” 

Theresa nods. “Go ahead if you think it will help. I’m not even sure why I didn’t burn it when I saw it.”

“Thank you,” he says. He tucks the picture into his inner pocket and rises, a certainty about who he needed to speak to next already growing in his mind. “Thank you both for your time.”

* * *

Dean stares dumbly at the place where Ben had disappeared through the wall, his heart lodged somewhere in his throat.

“Dammit, Ben!” he mutters, “I was just kidding about finding a secret door.”

He takes a deep breath to brace himself and plunges through the invisible door after Ben, the mild electric sizzle of magic sluicing over his skin, and stumbles to a stop on the other side. He’s in a cavernous room lit by several hanging bare bulbs that toss the room into pools of shadows separated by puddles of grotty orange light. Floor to ceiling shelves loom over him, and every shelf in his line of vision is covered with uniquely carved wooden boxes.

This must be the place all of those crates Dean found stacked in a random hallway had been destined for. 

“It’s like the Department of Mysteries,” Ben says in awe. He’s standing in a pool of orange light just inside the door, head tilted back to look up at the shelves. 

Great. _Now_ he shows some interest. 

“Dammit, Ben,” Dean says again and grabs Ben by the shoulder, pulls him around to get a good look at him. He looks fine, and Dean feels fine, so the camouflage was probably just an extra measure of magical security. “Don’t walk through doors only you can see.”

Ben shrugs off his hand, eyes on the boxes again. “Yeah, all right. What are they?”

“Curse boxes.” Dean looks a little more closely at what’s on the shelves. He gets why the door was hidden, and that’s probably exactly why Ben had to find it right away. It’s like frickin’ Murphy’s Law of kids or something. 

“What do they do?”

“You keep cursed objects in them to keep them from hurting people.” Dean spots a ledger in an empty spot on the shelf closest to the door and grabs it. “Don’t open them. At all, for any reason, ever, not even because you hate me right now.”

Ben scowls but nods reluctantly and wanders a little ways down the aisle.

The pages of the ledger are yellowed with age, but still legible. Everything from cursed rubies to cursed underwear has been catalogued and described, assigned a shelf number, and signed in; Dean’s eye catches on various objects as he flips through the brittle pages– cursed inkwell, cursed thimble, Alastair Crowley’s tarot deck, Ring of Gyges. 

“Cool,” he hears from somewhere deeper in the room. 

Dean looks up; Ben has, in the thirty seconds it had taken Dean to flip through the ledger, completely disappeared from his sight. He tenses, aware that Ben is at large in a room brimming with cursed objects, and the awe in his voice that Dean had hoped to invoke earlier can’t be directed at anything good.

“Ben!” Dean tosses the ledger back on the shelf. “Where are you?”

“Back here!”

Dean follows the sound of his voice three rows over to find Ben in front of a hunk of stone with the golden hilt of a sword sticking out of it. It flanks the doorway into the next room while a stack of unopened crates flanks the other side, and someone has tied a yellowing, hand written label to the hilt.

Ben’s eyes are bright with excitement. “The label says it’s Excalibur. Is it?” 

Dean shrugs. The Men of Letters had the Spear of Destiny sitting around in a box upstairs, so why not? “It could be, I guess.”

“Can I try to pull it from the stone?”

Dean paces around it, examining it from every angle. It looks exactly like the sword in Visyak’s basement had, buried to the hilt in a huge hunk of rock, and if it is Excalibur, Dean is pretty sure that Ben won’t be able to pull it out anymore than Dean had been able to pull out the sword of Brunswick. Hell, even C4 hadn’t been able to get that one out of the stone.

“Depends. Do you want to be the next King of England?”

Ben considers it a moment. “Do you think I’d get Kate Middleton?”

Dean grins. The kid has his priorities in order. “Maybe. Give it a try.”

Ben grabs the hilt, yanks up, but the sword doesn’t budge. He looks utterly disappointed, wraps two hands around the hilt and pulls. Still no joy.

“Sorry, man.” Dean claps him on the shoulder in sympathy. “No Kate Middleton. Let’s see what else is back here.” 

The next room is a black pit of darkness, but Dean finds a light switch just inside the door. Another bare bulb reveals a long, narrow room. A dozen or so glass cases of various sizes sit clustered haphazardly on a long table in the center of the room, and in each some kind of object sits on a bed of rotting red velvet. A few other cases are mounted on the walls, oxidized bronze plaques next to each one.

“What is all this stuff?” Ben asks, moving along the table.

Dean peers into a glass case to examine a short bronze blade with a rusting hilt. The handwritten label reads _Tyrfing, Sword of Svafrlami_ , but someone had scribbled in underneath _unverified_ in a different hand.

“Magical objects it looks like. Don’t touch any of it.”

He moves along the table, looking at the cases. There is a large twisting golden horn labeled as Gabriel’s Horn – he wonders if Cas would show up again if Dean told him he had found it - a round, gleaming piece of obsidian about the size of a dinner plate labeled as Tezcatlipoca’s mirror, and a rotting piece of leather labeled as Beowulf’s grieve with another _unverified_ scribbled underneath.

“This one says it’s a flying carpet,” Ben is standing beneath a huge oriental carpet framed and mounted on the wall, frowning. “Is this stuff for real?”

“Maybe. I told you they studied the occult.” 

“Can we try it out?” Ben sounds evilly hopeful.

Dean scowls at him. “The flying carpet? No. And you’re not funny.”

The corners of Ben’s mouth turn up into the barest shadow of a smile, the first smile of any kind that Dean has seen on him since... since he left them edging towards 3 years ago now. But Ben moves onto the next case before Dean can enjoy the sight, so Dean does, too. The next case contains an antique Colt revolver labeled as Samuel Colt’s gun, which it isn’t, since Dean has actually had Colt’s gun in his hand and met the man himself, but it does beg the question of how accurate the rest of the labels are.

“What do you think this does?”

“What?” Dean looks up from a case containing a ball of gold thread labeled _Ariadne’s Skein_ , apparently also unverified. Ben is at the other end of the room, scowling at one of the mounted cases containing a portrait in a gilt frame. Dean can’t quite see it at this angle.

“It’s a giant painting of some ugly old guy.”

Dean joins Ben in front of the painting. It _is_ a giant painting of some ugly old guy, but there’s something horrific about it, the way the wrinkles twist and bunch on his face, the way his smile shows black pits where his teeth should be and his rheumy eyes watch them as if alive.

Recognition trickles cold and unwanted down his spine.

He had seen souls like that in hell, not yet mutilated, but bent and articulated into a parody of a human being, arriving fresh from above already twisted in upon themselves.

Dean shivers; the dark memories of hell are rising up all around him, clinging, ghostly echoes of his torture: the sharp blade of Alastair’s grin, the screams of winged monsters swooping through the red haze of Hell’s sky, his own tenures as both victim and victimizer. Ben hasn’t noticed yet, though, hasn’t turned to see whatever Hell-wounds his superpower might show him on Dean’s soul; he is, thankfully, preoccupied with rubbing at the oxidized plaque next to the case with his sleeve, trying to read the label.

“ _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ ,” he says, curious. “Isn’t that a book or something?” 

The painting’s eyes stare down at them too hard, too alive. They seem to... flicker towards Ben. Fear coils in the pit of Dean’s stomach. What the hell was he thinking, not herding Ben back out as soon as he saw the curse boxes? The Men of Letters had the Spear of Destiny just sitting around in a crate. What kinds of things would actually make them bother unpacking them and stashing them away in a magically hidden room? 

“Hey!” Ben says in protest, as Dean begins nudging him away. “What are you doing?”

“We’re going now.” Dean glances away from the picture for just a second, one measly second to make sure he is moving Ben in the right direction, and when he looks back, the picture’s gap-toothed smile seems sharper. 

“But I wasn’t touching anything! I was just reading the plaque!” Dean only hears Ben’s complaints with half an ear, too busy herding him around the end of the table while keeping one eye on the painting.

“I know,” Dean says to pacify him, “but we shouldn’t be in here.”

Ben twists around to glare at Dean, another complaint no doubt about to spill forth, but his mouth snaps shut and his eyes widen.

“What did you see?” he says, and Dean knows that his thirteen-year-old kid had just gotten a good eyeful of what Dean’s soul looks like when he’s remembering Hell.

Ben’s head whips around towards the painting, and the painting fucking _blinks_.

Ben huffs out a small sound of terror. “Dean,” he says, voice low and fearful. “There’s something in that painting.”

“And with good reason, I bet. Let’s go.” Dean stops nudging and just grabs a handful of Ben’s hoodie to steer him out into the main room again. 

Dean slaps the light switch off as he goes, hoping to blind the painting. In front of him, Ben suddenly whines, “Dude, let go,” and lurches sideways, pulling himself out of Dean’s grasp and stumbling into the unopened crates opposite Excalibur. In the corner of his eye, Dean sees the crates totter; the smallest on top tumbles off.

The crack as the crate breaks open on the floor echoes through the room like a gunshot.

They both jump; Dean aborts his attempt to grab the 1911, which he doesn’t even have right now, and Ben lets out a sigh of relief.

“Shit, sorry” Ben mutters, then realizing he swore, adds with a wince, “I mean, crap.”

“You okay?” Dean pauses long enough to check him over, not giving a damn about the cussing. That spot between his shoulder blades itches with the knowledge that the painting is still staring after them. 

“Yeah.” Ben turns to the mess in their path. “Sorry I knocked over that –“

He suddenly goes silent and still, and Dean’s blood runs cold. “Ben?” 

Ben doesn’t move; his attention is transfixed on the heap of straw that has spilled out of the broken crate. Something oblong and silver lies in the nest of straw like the magic objects on their rotting bed of velvet in the other room, gleaming brightly in the dingy lighting. Dean toes some straw aside to see that it’s an empty silver quiver. More packing straw is shoved down inside where the arrows would go, and its silver-inlaid shoulder strap is twisted around it. There’s a little tag tied to this one, too, but it’s stuck face down in the straw, and Dean just doesn’t give a damn what it is or whether it’s verified, as long as it isn’t looking at Ben like he’s dinner.

“Ben,” Dean says again, louder and more sharply, and when Ben doesn’t move, he grabs him by the shoulder and pulls him around. 

His pupils are tiny black pinpricks. 

“Ben!” Dean shouts and shakes him hard like he had in the car outside of Nashville. 

It works; Ben blinks, shakes his head like he’s clearing it, and says, “Sorry.”

He almost asks what he saw, but that painting is watching them, watching _Ben_ , Dean can feel it. “It’s alright. Let’s just get the hell out of here.”

Ben lets him herd him back the way they came and out through the hidden door with no more complaint, magic sluicing over their skin. Dean pulls the door closed behind them, and then he’s looking at an empty stretch of wall except for the picture of Eisenhower, who is smiling at him blandly from under his bushy eyebrows.

He hopes the magic hiding the door is also doing something to keep that evil fucking painting inside. He and Sammy are going to be doing a bit of research on demon possessed paintings as soon as the current crisis is resolved.

Dean turns to Ben to see him peering up at him with concern. “Dean, are you okay? You looked all-“ he makes a wavy gesture with his hands “-weird back there.”

“Yeah. I’m fine.” He’s shaky, and his heart won’t stop pounding, but fear for Ben washed away whatever memories of Hell were trying to surface, so he’s good. Sort of. Aside from the fact that Ben started having more visions in the middle of room full of curse boxes with that evil ass painting staring after them. “Are you okay? What did you see?”

Ben drops his eyes and shrugs, his little lying tells radiating off of him. “Nothing I haven’t seen before.” 

Dean eyes him, suddenly and for the first time in his life sympathizing with his Dad. Dean had been on the other end of Sam’s lies a million times, couldn’t always tell them from the truth because Sam was a professional liar like him, but Ben lying to him was different. It’s like he can see it, read it in every movement, in the slightest timbre of his voice. He wonders if he had been just as transparent to his Dad as Ben is to him – and he had lied, a lot, usually to keep the peace between his dad and Sam - and if it had been just as hard to let it go even when he knew the fight wasn’t worth it.

“All right then,” Dean says, accepting that now just isn’t the time. “Let’s go see the rest of this place. Just try not to step through any more invisible doors.”

Thankfully, Ben doesn’t argue.

In the bus station in Charlotte, Ben sees a _thing_.

He doesn’t know what it is. On the surface it’s human: a skinny punk kid a few years older than Ben, nose ring and chain, spiked Mohawk, studded leather jacket, the works. He’s leaning against the wall, watching the busses come and go, arms crossed, a disgusted sneer twisting his face. He draws Ben’s eye at first because of the throwback Sex Pistols look, really bad ass but kind of out of place here in a sleepy, middle of the night bus station. But when Ben sees him, really sees him, his heart stutters in fear and his mouth goes dry.

He immediately drops his eyes and puts a bit of hustle in his step, not wanting to draw the punk’s attention, because the punk has a row of razor sharp teeth hidden in his mouth, and Ben really doesn’t want to find out what he uses them for.

He slips into a mostly empty station. It’s warm and quiet. A handful of people are slouched in ugly plastic chairs, and a there is a single, bleary eyed teller at the ticket windows, but otherwise, there’s not a lot going on.

“Can I be of assistance, young sir?”

Alarmed, Ben whirls at the voice behind him, but it’s just a bus station attendant, smiling at him pleasantly. He almost relaxes, but then his eyes fall on a badly mended tear in the attendant’s red vest, sewn up from the bottom hem to the armpit on his left side. He wouldn’t have noticed usually, but the tear kind of looks like a sloppily stitched wound, the cloth puckered between stitches and the raw edges peeking out. Everything else about him is neat as a pin, from the crease in his slacks to his neatly trimmed beard. For no good reason he can determine, Ben decides he’s creepy and takes a step back to put a little distance between them.

“Uh, bathroom?”

“Of course.” He gestures off to the right, his shiny gold nametag flashing brightly in the florescent lighting. Ben didn’t realize people actually named their kids Chet. “The restrooms are just down that hallway, sir.”

Ben nods and gives him a half hearted thanks, the weight of the attendant’s eyes following him down the hall.

The men’s room smells musty, like fake fruit candy and pee, but it’s empty and more or less clean. Ben takes care of necessities then drops his back pack on the floor between his feet while he washes his hands and splashes water on his face. His eyes are still gummy with sleep, and his neck aches from being curled awkwardly around his backpack since Pittsburg. He feels like shit (two dollars in the swear jar at home), and when he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror, even over the bright light, he looks like it, too. 

He is having a hard time caring. The fear and the worry have pushed him into this numb, quiet kind of place. He’s still scared for his mom, he’s still worried about Aunt Sarah and Lucy, and his stomach still rolls with guilt when he thinks about Bill, but all those feelings seem to be far away, like something that’s happening to someone else in another time and place.

He sticks his hands under the automated hand dryer, relishes the warm air on the skin of his hands. He regrets not bringing a heavier coat with him; he hadn’t really planned out running away very well. 

He’s starting to think he might have made a mistake.

Behind him, the door swings open with a creak, barely audible over the sound of the dryer. Ben whirls, the dryer shuts off, and the echoing silence that follows is somehow louder than the dryer had been.

It’s the punk. Of course it’s the punk.

“Why’d you look at me like that?” He’s got a thick southern accent that doesn’t match the London punk look at all, and he looks pissed, like he wants to be kicking in heads with his steel toed boots, and Ben’s head specifically.

“Like what?” Ben snatches up his back pack and holds it by the handle on the top, thinking maybe he can use it as a weapon if he needs to. 

The punk takes one, slow menacing step towards him like he’s a bad guy in a movie. “Oh, you know.”

Ben didn’t know, but he’s not going to contradict the thing with the row of needle sharp teeth in his mouth. “Um, sorry?”

The punk takes another one of those slow, deliberate steps. Ben starts to panic; he’s trapped, the punk is between him and the door, he doesn’t have anything on him to protect himself from a normal human being let alone a _thing_. He doesn’t know what to do; if he had any energy to divert to anger, he’d be furious at Dean all over again for not teaching him how to take care of himself.

“You smell fuckin’ fantastic.” As it comes closer, Ben can see blood welling in its eyes, ringing its irises. “Never smelled a human that smelled so good before. Wonder what your blood tastes like.”

Adrenaline shoots through Ben’s body. The thing is talking about tasting his blood, and, no. Just, no. He didn’t come this far, didn’t exorcize a demon, possibly kill Bill, and run away from home just to get eaten by a Sid Vicious wannabe in some bus station bathroom in North Carolina.

Besides, he knows Dean would fight.

Quick as he can, Ben swings the backpack at the thing, hoping that the surprise attack would catch if off guard enough to knock it aside or something, but the thing is fast, and next thing Ben knows, his backpack is flying out of his hand and the thing is slapping him down _hard_.

Pain erupts across his face, sharp and immediate and radiating through his entire skull before Ben even realizes he’s been hit. He stumbles backwards under the force of it; his feet slip in something wet, and he falls flat on his back, his head cracking on the gross tiled floor.

Blackness swims up towards him, but his body is already rushing to compensate, giving him another shot of adrenaline that helps him grab onto consciousness. The clop of the thing’s boots is coming towards him, and Ben forces himself to roll onto his side, to twist and bend enough to get his knees under him, even though his head gives one massive, agonizing throb as he moves. 

Dizziness swamps him at the change of elevation, and Ben can’t seem to get any further. His stomach rolls and his head pounds. The fake candy smell of the bathroom seems thick to his senses, and the tiles are cold and slick against his palms – 

“Fucking little shit.” The thing’s voice is little more than a growl above him, his words now slurred. There’s a hand on the back of his hoodie, and then the world is shifting up and back as the thing hauls him up and holds him there, on his knees.

It grins down at him, all those hidden razor teeth now visible. For some reason the night Dean came home and shoved Ben into the wall comes to mind (there had been something wrong with him, really, _really_ wrong), and Ben blinks up at him stupidly, all fuzzy headed and dizzy and he just hurts so _bad_.

Also, Ben’s pretty sure he’s about to die.

“I’m going to drink you down.” The thing’s eyes are bright and hungry, like a cat stalking prey. It would be the scariest thing that Ben had ever seen, scarier even than the changelings, if he hadn’t met the demons first. “Gonna see if you taste as good as you-“

There’s a woosh and a snick, and the thing’s eyes go wide. Ben knows something has changed, but he can’t see what until the thing’s head starts moving to the right at an unnatural angle, sort of sliding slowly. A thin line of red appears, and then there’s dark liquid welling up and spilling down the thing’s neck ,and it’s blood, and the thing’s head is toppling off its shoulders, falling over Ben’s head and bouncing on the floor, and the headless body above him starts to fall forward –

Ben’s not so dazed that he can’t dive to the side before the body lands on top of him.

He scrambles to his feet, sickened and freaked out. His head is screaming, his stomach is rolling in revulsion, but he gets himself as far away as he can from the puddle of thick, syrupy blood spreading out from the punk’s neck. The head stares at him sightlessly from under the sinks where it is resting on one ear, its nose chain drooping loosely across its cheek. Ben swallows back the urge to vomit.

“By Zeus, what a mess,” says the creepy attendant with the badly sewn vest. He is on the other side of what is becoming a sea of blood, frowning. A goldish curved sword is in his hand; little splatters of blood are dripping from its blade. “Vampires. Disgusting little parasites. Nothing but hunger and the survival instincts of a lemming.”

The attendant turns to Ben abruptly. “Are you all right, young sir?”

“Yeah. Fine.” Ben sidles to the side and snatches up his backpack before it can get soaked by the blood. He hastily pulls it on, keeping his eyes on the attendant the entire time. He doesn’t know who takes a sword to work other than Dean – though, he guesses it was actually a machete and not a sword hidden in the tool box in the back of Dean’s truck – but still. Maybe another hunter, but Dean hadn’t seemed to be too keen on hunters other than his friend Bobby. Ben has no idea why, but he decides to err on the side of caution just in case. “Who are you?”

“Hermes, god of travelers, thieves, boundaries, transitions, and et cetera.” He gives a short, sharp bow like those butlers in all the British dramas his mom liked to watch. “At your service.”

“But your name tag says Chet.” It’s a stupid thing to say, but Ben’s kind of dazed and, come on, _Hermes_?

“A convenient pseudonym. My real name is Hermes.”

“You’re the Greek god, Hermes? Like in _Percy Jackson_?”

Hermes makes a face like he’s just eaten ear wax. “Not exactly. But it’s close enough, I suppose.” 

“I don’t believe you.”

“Can you not see me?” He gestures at himself. “The real me?”

Ben peers at him a little more closely, does it on instinct almost, and he does see – a wide brimmed hat with fluttering gold wings, a staff with two snakes undulating around the shaft, and another pair of fluttering wings on his boots. The tear on his side is on his real self, too, his fluttery, not there tunic just as badly stitched as his vest. 

“Shit. You are Hermes.”

The attendant – Hermes – clucks his tongue. “Language, young sir.”

Ben blushes. “Sorry. I’m just a little –“

“Flummoxed?”

Ben has no idea what that means, but it sounds like he feels. “Uh, sure.”

“So tell me,” Hermes says offhandedly, crouching to wipe the blade of his sword on the leg of the vampire’s body. “Where did you get it?”

“Get what?”

He gestures towards Ben’s chest. “That.”

Ben looks down at his chest, expecting to see blood or dirt or something there. There’s nothing. “What are you talking about?”

“The glowing-

And it must be the head wound, because Ben loses focus, might even black out for a split second, because one minute, Hermes is crouching next to the body, sword in hand, and the next, Hermes is standing again and the sword is nowhere to be seen. Ben has completely missed what Hermes had said, has even lost track of what they were talking about.

It’s pretty worrisome; Ben wonders if he has a concussion.

“Sorry. What did you say?”

Hermes eyes him thoughtfully. “Nothing important. Are you feeling all right?”

“I think so.” Ben touches his jaw, awareness of the pain rushing back in on him now that the danger seems to have passed. The vampire had hit him pretty hard – dude, the punk had been a _vampire_ , the movies had it all wrong – and he had cracked his skull on the floor, but he would be okay in a day or so. His bumps and bruises tended to heal pretty fast. “My head hurts right now, but I’ll be okay.”

“I am glad to hear that.” Hermes gives a short nod, bounces a little on the balls of his feet. “May I offer you some assistance, then? Other than beheading vampires in public restrooms, of course. You have the feel of a lost traveler about you.”

They had studied Greek mythology a little in English a couple of months ago, and he had read all the _Percy Jackson_ books, so Ben knows that the Greek gods didn’t do a lot out of the kindness of their hearts. Also, his life of late isn’t really giving him a lot of lucky breaks, so there must be a catch. “Maybe. What do you want in return?”

“Oh, good question. You are a clever boy. I merely require your thanks and gratitude.” Hermes leans in, lowers his voice conspiratorially. “But of course, if you would like protection on your travels, I might be able to provide that service for a rather reasonable price.”

Okay, some help is really tempting. Really, really tempting. But he’s not all that eager to trust anyone right now, even if Hermes did save him from a vampire. 

“Like what?” Ben asks, suspicious. “Probably not money.”

“No, not money. A sacrifice.” Hermes raises his hand, his thumb and forefinger pressed close together but not touching. “A little one. Even the smallest, most insignificant sacrifice will be a thousand times more powerful than your run of the mill gratitude.”

“How small and insignificant?”

Hermes shrugs casually. “Some ham, a bit of wine and honey. Nothing terribly fancy. Just something to give me a little boost.”

That doesn’t seem like a lot to ask, so Ben is extra suspicious. “Not a blood sacrifice or anything?”

Hermes perks up at that. “Are you offering?”

“What? No!” Serves him right for even entertaining the idea of making a deal with a god. “I’m not killing anything for you.”

“Why not? I killed something for you.”

Well, okay, that’s true, but also, not fair. “Well, I didn’t ask you to!”

Hermes’s eyes narrow a little, and the restroom suddenly seems too cramped and dark, the air too heavy and warm. Hermes is pissed, and Ben hunches down, tries to be as small as possible. He’d make a run for the door if a freaking Greek god wasn’t blocking the way.

“Sorry,” he mumbles.

“I’m sure you are,” Hermes says, voice low and cold, but then he sighs forlornly, and the room is suddenly lighter, less stuffy. “I guess you’re right. No need to apologize. A non-lethal sacrifice will do just as well, though it won’t be as potent as a blood sacrifice.”

Ben relaxes fractionally, but his instincts are screaming at him to be somewhere, anywhere else.

“So we’re agreed, then?” Hermes says, all pleasant again. “A sacrifice for protection? No blood, I promise.”

Ben hesitates, his instincts not really letting up on the be somewhere else thing, but Hermes is a god and he’s not sure how to say no. This is way worse than when the old lady down the street asks him to pull her trash cans to the curb. But Hermes has just decapitated a vampire that was trying to eat him, and Ben is really, really desperate.... 

“Yeah, okay. I’m in,” he says, and immediately regrets it.

“Excellent.” Hermes beckons him with a wave of his hand. “Come along then. Time flies and all that.”

Ben skirts the edge of the blood, now running along the channels between the tiles, spreading inexorably through the bathroom. Hermes is suddenly right there, a guiding hand at Ben’s back. Ben shivers and shrinks away, unhappy with how close Hermes and his mysteriously disappearing sword are, but not really sure how one goes about asking a god to get out of his personal space. 

Yeah, this is a really bad idea.

On the way out, Ben looks over his shoulder at the decapitated body and the pool of blood and the vampire’s head resting against the wall. “What about that?”  
Hermes pauses to glance at the mess. “What about it?”  
“Shouldn’t we clean it up or something?”  
“What do I care?” Hermes says with an indifferent shrug. “It’s not like I work here.”


	8. Chapter 8

Mid-afternoon, Sam points the rental car towards Battle Creek.

It had taken him the better part of the day to find Lisa’s sister. A For Sale sign had been speared into the manicured lawn of her house in one of the pricier suburban neighborhoods of Indianapolis, and the rooms had been empty and vacant when he peered through the front window. A gossipy neighbor had told him with no little relish that Sarah Evans had taken her daughter and moved to ‘some place in Michigan’ after the death of her husband and disappearance of her nephew, but hadn’t known exactly where.

Sam decides ‘some place in Michigan’ must be Battle Creek, so he checks out of the hotel and drives up that day. He can’t find a listing for Lisa’s sister anywhere in or around Battle Creek, but a little bit of research reveals that Lisa’s house is still rented in her name, the rent paid promptly by the first of every month by Lisa’s dead brother-in-law’s very wealthy parents. Sam’s instincts and experience tell him that Lisa’s house is the right place to start, and when he pulls up into the driveway a little after seven, the lights are blazing bright in the early evening darkness.

“I haven’t seen one of you in a while,” Sarah Evans says when she opens the door to Sam and his fake badge. She looks a great deal like Lisa – same dark eyes and hair, same wry, wary expression – but older, more worn, though she is the younger of the two. “I don’t suppose you’ve come bearing good news.”

Sam puts on his best grim-but-sympathetic Fed face. “I’m afraid not. I just have some questions about your sister and nephew.”

She sighs wearily. “Of course you do.”

And just like that, she lets him in.

The house looks much like he remembers it. The same pictures of Ben still hang in the foyer – Ben in his baseball uniform and Ben as a baby with his face smeared with birthday cake and Ben in front of a bouncy castle dressed like a miniature Dean. She gestures that he should follow, and she leads him through the living room, same simple suburban décor as before, though young children’s toys are scattered across the floor. A little girl in pink pajamas is sitting in front of the TV watching an animated movie with talking animals. She has a raggedy doll in a pink gingham dress in her lap, and her thumb is in her mouth while she watches a singing princess with wide eyes. She doesn’t even look at them as they pass.

In the kitchen, the kitchen that also hasn’t changed since Sam was last here, Sarah offers him a drink, which Sam declines, then takes a seat at the kitchen table and gestures at the chair across from her. 

“I don’t know what I can tell you that I haven’t already told the police and everyone else who has been in and out of this house for the past month.” Under the bright kitchen lights, she looks exhausted; heavy dark circles hang under her eyes, and the slump of her shoulders reminds him of Theresa Dixon. “I’ve told the police everything I know.”

“I understand, but I’m only looking into the Braedens’ disappearances for a possible connection to another case.”

“What other case?”

He gives her more grim Fed. “I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to say.”

She sighs. “Of course not.” She gestures impatiently. “Well, go ahead.”

Sam pulls out his pocket notebook and feigns flipping through the pages for information. “Did either Lisa or Ben mention someone new in their lives?”

“No, no one new. Lisa hadn’t really been willing to let anyone in after Dean left and Matt was killed in the home invasion.” She hesitates. “Do you know about Dean and Matt?”

Sam flips back a page or two, pretends to read something over. “Dean Campbell and Matt Collins? Yes.”

Sarah seems satisfied by that, so Sam continues with his questioning. “Were they behaving differently?”

Sarah shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t see them a lot after they moved here. I mean, we Skyped every couple of weeks so that Lucy wouldn’t forget them, and we tried to get together on a weekend here and there, but I never noticed anything weird. Although, the last few times I talked to Lisa before she disappeared, she did mention that Ben had been acting oddly.”

“How so?”

“She said he had grown very distant and had withdrawn from his friends.” She shrugged. “I mean, it could have been a teenager thing. But he was also asking about his father. He even called me to ask about him.”

Sam perks up at that information. “And what do you know about Ben's father?"

Sarah purses her lips, shifts awkwardly in her chair. "That’s a complicated question.”

“Why?”

“Lisa said there was some ‘biker at a bar’." Sarah makes quote marks with her fingers. "But I’m pretty sure Dean Campbell is Ben’s father.” 

Something eases in Sam’s chest. “Lisa told you that?"

“When I finally asked her if it was Dean, she didn't exactly deny it. And honestly, I doubt she would have ever taken Dean in if he weren’t his father. She never let any of her other boyfriends move in with them.”

"So, there couldn't be anyone else?"

Another weary shrug. “I suppose there could be. Back then, Lisa always had lots of ‘boyfriends.’” She makes more air quotes with her fingers. “But I would put money on Dean. Five minutes in the same room with the two of them, and you could tell. Here, let me show you."

She gets up and goes to the bulletin board propped up on the counter, shoves a jar of coins and bills labeled ‘Swear Jar’ out of the way to get at the pictures. Sam has a flash of memory, of standing in the house in Cicero and examining the same bulletin board with the same pictures pinned among the coupons and shopping lists, baffled by why seeing Dean grinning out of pictures with Ben had made him feel nothing more than bland disinterest.

“See?” She puts a picture down in front of Sam. It’s a picture of Ben and Dean, standing beside an old truck and covered in grease, both grinning at the camera with the exact same smile. “Ben is his little clone. He looks exactly like him, and he even has a lot of the same mannerisms. If someone else is his father, he must be Dean’s twin.”

Dean’s twin. That’s what he’s looking at, isn’t he? Ben is little clone of Dean, just like Amy Dixon had been a little clone of her father, and he bet if he compared the other dead children with their fathers, he would see a lot of little clones. And the mothers probably would have sworn on the lives of their children that the man they were with the night of the child’s conception had been their husband, and he had behaved and spoken exactly right. There had probably been no question in their minds of who their partner was. 

“They do look alike,” he says casually, like he’s looking at pictures of strangers and not as someone who had been an eye witness to how like Dean Ben had looked in his green jacket the night before, or the way he had mirrored Dean’s stance at the abandoned gas station in Georgia, had flicked the top of his water bottle into the brush with the same snap of his wrist. “Did she ever have a paternity test done?”

“If she did, she kept it to herself.”

There’s a shuffling sound behind him, and Sarah’s daughter materializes next to them, the top of her head barely clearing the table. 

“Movie’s done, Mommy,” she says and raises her arms to be picked up, the doll dangling from one hand.

Sarah gives her a watery smile and pulls her into her lap, combs her hand through her hair with idle affection. The girl stares at Sam with the same dark eyes as her mother, her thumb in her mouth. In the other room, Sam can hear the soundtrack of the movie playing through the credits. 

“Did you ever notice anything different about Ben?”

Sarah frowns, her fingers catching and smoothing down a stray lock of her daughter’s hair. “Different? How so?”

“Did he have any special talents or abilities? Something that would have drawn attention?”

She considers a moment then shakes her head. “No, not really. He’s a normal kid. He’s usually just a B student, but he loves sports. He’s always happy and energetic and he has lots of friends. And he’s so sweet.” She smiles, her whole face lighting up. “It’s like he always knows when you were sad and he’ll just run up and give you this big hug, and it’s like the sun parting the clouds, you know?”

Lucy pulls her thumb out of her mouth long enough to say, “Ben makes my booboos go ‘way.”

“That’s right, baby.” Sarah kisses the crown of her daughter’s head. “Ben always kisses your booboos better.”

Sam stares at Lucy, with her big brown eyes and her thumb in her mouth, remembering what it was like to be so little and so sure that Dean could make things right, remembering how he used to insist that Dean kiss his booboos over and over again, expecting Dean’s big brother magic to make the scrapes and bruises go away....

And the tumblers just fall into place. 

Sam clears his throat and shifts forward. He knows exactly where this conversation needs to go. “I have some unusual questions for you now, Ms. Evans. Please bear with me. How often do you and Lucy get sick?”

Sarah blinks in surprise at the change in direction. “Not often.”

“What about in the last few years, since Lisa and Ben moved away from you? Have you been sick more often?”

She frowns in confusion. “I suppose. My allergies have been worse than they used to be. Bill and I got the flu last winter, and we hadn’t had that in years. Lucy has had a several of bad ear infections in the last couple of months, but she just started preschool, or had before Lisa and Ben and Bill-“

She pauses, sucks in a deep breath. Pain briefly flashes across her face before she smothers it again. “I don’t understand, Agent. What does our health have to do with anything?”

“Like I said, unusual questions,” Sam says, barreling forward before she becomes too suspicious. “What about Lisa? How often was she ill?”

“Not often, really. She’s a health nut, though. She’s always been into eating organic produce, never allows high fructose corn syrup in the house, that kind of thing. She’s a yoga teacher, you know.”

The little brother part of Sam finds it hilarious that for a whole year, Dean had to eat his vegetables, but he makes himself focus. He needs to pay attention to what he’s doing.

“And Ben?”

And then he sees it: she tenses, her mouth turns down, her eyes dart away. The compulsion to protect Ben is kicking in. “Like I said, he’s a normal kid. He gets sick like one.”

Sam nods, decides not to press her about Ben or call her on the lie. Her reaction is proof enough.

“And Dean Campbell? When he lived with Lisa and Ben, how was his health?”

“He was fine. Well, physically, anyway. But he was a hot mess when he first showed up.”

“How so?”

“His brother had just died.” Sarah pauses, mouth twisting grimly. “Although, I guess he hadn’t died, there was something about a mix up at a hospital and amnesia, I’m not really clear on that whole story. But Dean was drinking a lot, sleeping all the time. Lisa played it down, but I could tell it was bad when she would actually talk about it. Then, after about a month he leveled out, got a job. After that, I wouldn’t have ever known he was in a bad place if Lisa didn’t talk about it sometimes.”

And that was clincher for Sam. It had taken him much longer than a month to get it together after Dean went to Hell, if you can call getting addicted to demon blood getting it together. And after Dean disappeared into Purgatory, Sam had barely been functional until he met Amelia, and even then, everyday was a struggle. 

But Dean, his excessively overprotective big brother, getting it together after a month? Not likely. When Sam had announced he was going to college, you would have thought he was dying from Dean’s epic melt down, but Sam going into the Pit for what they had thought was forever? He seriously doubts that Dean would have gotten himself together within a month, even for the sake of keeping his promise to Sam. Maybe after a few months, maybe more, knowing Dean, but one month to be fully functional? 

No, not possible, not without outside influence, anyway.

“Dean’s not a suspect, is he? Because Dean would never hurt them.” 

Sam is startled by her question. “Not to my knowledge-“

“Though, you know,” she says, eyes distant as she follows some line of thought Sam hasn’t been made privy to, “I wouldn’t be surprised if Dean took Ben.”

Sam stiffens. “Sorry?” 

“Ben called me, oh, about six weeks or so ago, asking if I remembered Dean. Up until that point, neither he nor Lisa would talk about him. They would just get this blank look on their faces and say ‘Who?’ whenever I brought it up. I was so glad that Ben at least had decided to deal with it.” She nods firmly, mostly to herself. “I bet he found a way to contact him. Ben is really very clever when he needs to be.”

Sam doesn’t care for the direction her speculation is taking. “Are you saying that you think Dean kidnapped Ben?”

“What?” she says, aghast. “No. Dean would never do something so horrible. But I think he would have come and picked him up if he called.”

Sam frowns at the various levels of truth in that statement, at the utter surety in her belief in Dean. He’s beginning to suspect that whatever spell had affected Dean and Lisa’s perception of Ben’s healing abilities is a blood-based spell that affects blood relatives and not just the parents. He should probably be unnerved by his own lack of concern for Ben’s abilities, though he isn’t, not really. Maybe it also causes the bearers to recognize others under the same spell unconsciously and to trust them completely? Either that, or Dean just made a really good impression while he lived with the Braedens, despite the drinking.

“That’s a possibility,” Sam says cautiously. “Do you plan to mention this to the detectives on Ben’s case?”

“Oh God, no.” Sarah waves the idea away as if it’s the most ridiculous idea ever. “It’s just a theory. Besides, I wouldn’t want them to start looking to arrest Dean.” Then she stiffens, eyes Sam suspiciously. “Do you plan to mention it?”

Sam is quick to deny it. “No. Not my jurisdiction.” 

She seems to believe him because she relaxes, nods thoughtfully. The blood spell again? “Good. Because if Lisa really is gone, and Dean did come for Ben, I want him to be safe with someone who loves him, not get Dean arrested for taking care of Ben when I obviously couldn’t.”

“Of course, ma’am. I understand.” Sam tucks his notepad into his pocket with the picture of Lisa and the thing that hadn’t been Henry Dixon. “I think you’ve answered all of my questions.”

Sam pushes away from the table and stands. He has more answers than he expected to get, and now he needs time to sort through it all, to see what is coming together and what he still needs to know.

“Did it help you with your case?” Sarah asks as both she and her daughter crane their necks to look up at him at his full height.

“I think so.” His eyes catch on the picture of Dean and Ben, still lying on the table; he itches to take it with him, but he forces himself to keep his hands to himself and say the same inadequate thing he said to the Dixons: “Thank you so much for your time.”

* * *

His phone wakes him up not long after nine; Dean groans, rolls over, grabs it off the table next to the bed.

“So, I know what Ben’s superpower is,” Sam says when Dean grunts a greeting into the phone.

Dean blinks into the darkness. “Yeah? What’s that?”

“He’s a healer.”

“Well, yeah.” Dean rubs a hand over his face, blinks some more to convince his eyes that they do need to be open. “I could have told you that. Would have saved you a trip to Indiana.” 

“No, man,” Sam says impatiently, like he thinks Dean is being dumb on purpose. “I’m not talking about what’s been happening to him for the past few days. I’m talking about his whole life. He’s a real, legitimate healer. Not an angel with amnesia, not a skeevy faith healer backed by reapers. We’re talking laying-on-of-hands, healing-by-touch healing. The real deal, Dean.”

Dean sits up, his post-road trip lethargy wearing off pretty damn quick. “How do you figure that?”

Sam hesitates. “Well, you’re going to be mad.”

Dean tenses. It’s like he can’t let Sam out of his sight for five minutes. “What did you do, Sam?”

“Just hear me out before you lose it. I spoke to Lisa’s sister.”

Dean wishes he were surprised. “Why would you do that?”

“You know why.”

Dean sighs. “Only you, Sam. Just tell me you didn’t tell her Ben’s with us. Because the last thing we need is to become suspects in a kidnapping.”

“I’m not stupid, Dean.” Dean can easily imagine the bitchy expression on Sam’s face. “I went in as a Fed.”

“And she just up and told you that Ben is a healer? Dude, Sarah’s just this side of being a Stepford wife; I don’t think she’d recognize a vampire if it bit her.”

“No. I experienced it firsthand. Talking to her just helped me realize it.”

Sometimes getting information out of Sam was like pulling teeth, very convoluted, irritating teeth. “What are you talking about?”

“Last night, when I coughed up the blood?”

“Yeah?”

“It hurt. There was this burning feeling. First time ever. And then Ben touched me, and it just... went away. Gone.”

Dean was quiet for a moment, taking it in. On the one hand, he was not pleased to hear that Sam was now experiencing pain along with the coughing, but on the other, he felt an absolute lack of surprise, like he had always known that about Ben but hadn’t realized it, yet.

“Ever experience anything like that around him?” Sam asks, all cautious and gentle. It kind of makes Dean want to punch his little brother in the face. Too bad he’s in Indiana or Michigan or where the hell ever.

“Maybe,” Dean says, reluctant. There’s a pressure building behind his eyes, promising a headache in the near future.

“Maybe?” 

“There was this one time.” He stops, scrubs his hand over his mouth. He hadn’t thought about that day in a long time, just shoved it down deep with all his other awful, shame-filled memories. “I was drunk off my ass in the garage, and Ben found me there. I couldn’t even stand, I was so drunk, and he touched me on the arm. It was like.... My head just cleared right up. I was still drunk, but not flat on my ass in the garage drunk.”

Dean leaves out the part where had had the gun in his mouth only moments before, so close to blowing out his brains, and the part where Ben escorted him into the house after and skipped school to spend the day babysitting him.

They are both quiet for a moment.

“You figure out what’s killing those kids, yet?” Dean finally asks to break the silence, to escape the weight of that memory.

“Not yet. I’m going to stop for the night and get a room, see if I can’t narrow it down. There are a few things I want to follow up on before I leave the area.” 

And that’s pretty vague for Sam, which means he’s working Dean like a witness, now. Which, right, no big surprise there. But that also means he’s knows something that he isn’t sharing. “What aren’t you telling me, Sam?”

“Nothing. There’s nothing to tell, yet. All I’ve got is a bunch of clues that don’t make any sense and a few theories. Just, you know, hang out with Ben and, I don’t know, get caught up on the _The Walking Dead_ or something.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Dean sighs. Sam’s going to do what Sam’s going to do, and Dean will fight it out with him when he gets back. “Just call me when you’ve got something.”

Sam makes a noise of agreement, and Dean ends the call. He heaves himself off the concrete slab Sam claims is a bed, shoves his feet back into his boots. He needs coffee. He wants a bottle of Jack and maybe a beer chaser, but he’ll have coffee because he’s got Ben and getting shitfaced isn’t going to fix anything. 

He heads towards the kitchen, but stops at his bedroom, looks in on Ben, tangled up in the blankets, one foot hanging off the edge. He had put Ben in his bed around noon, since it’s actually fit for humans use, and the kid had been asleep every time Dean had checked on him since. Dean wonders if that should worry him, how much Ben has been sleeping in the past two days, especially now that the pneumonia seems to be gone. Well, worry him more than all the other crap - visions, monster doctors, and the like – that he had to worry about. It’s hard to prioritize. Always is.

Ben rolls onto his back, throwing one arm out. Dean feels a rush of affection – his kid, his – then a clenching, agonizing twist of terror that feels a lot like letting Sam do the trials, like watching him jump into the Pit, like leaving him behind in a mental institution while his Hell hallucinations slowly took him apart.

Ben snuffles in his sleep, mutters something incoherent.

Dean continues on to the kitchen.

* * *

One minute Ben is trying to load the dishwasher before his mom gets home, rinsing the dregs of chocolate milk out of his favorite Batman glass, the one that broke two years ago, and the next, the visions are rolling over him: the wings, rising to block out the stars. Then the stars themselves falling. A young guy with his eyes burned out. A mark on Dean’s arm, bright red against pale skin, but black under the surface. The wings again, the crunching of bone. Sam and the mattress and the books-

A hand suddenly, large and warm, over his eyes. 

“Sorry about that,” Dean says, his voice a comforting rumble. “Those aren’t for you.”

A flush of warmth washes through him, and suddenly he’s clearer, looser, like some low, grating pressure has been released.

Ben slumps against the counter in relief. “What did you do?”

Dean reaches around him to turn off the water. “I took away the visions. You should be free of them now.”

“You can do that? Why didn’t you do that before?”

Dean wanders towards the back door. “I didn’t realize. I’m still a little confused. Everything is coming back to me so slowly.” He flicks the curtain aside and peers out into the back yard. “How long have you been seeing the wings?”

“I don’t know. A while now. I already told you that.” He turns back to his task, but all the dishes are done, piled up in the dish drainer and already dry. 

Ben stares at them, forlorn. “Why isn’t she home yet?”

“I don’t know.” Dean tries to open the door, but the knob only rattles in his hand and doesn’t turn. “But don’t worry, she’ll be back. Her prophecy hasn’t been fulfilled yet.”

“What prophecy?” Ben asks.

Somewhere in the house, a door slams. There’s a whisper, like someone’s calling him from a far off room.

“Mom?” Ben’s heart leaps in hope and he starts towards the sound, hoping to find his mom coming out of the bathroom or changing the sheets on the guestroom bed.

Dean grabs him by the arm before he can get very far. “Wait. He’s coming. You should probably wake up, now.”

Ben tries to tug his foot away, but Dean has him by the ankle now, which is weird and sort of dickish.

“Why won’t you let-“

Ben opens his eyes.

He’s standing in the hallway just outside of Dean’s room, the cold of the marble floor seeping through his socks. The door is open, and in the light spilling in from the hallway, he can see the blankets have been dragged off the bed towards the door like he’d gotten tangled in them when he was trying to get up. 

Which is freaking him out because he doesn’t actually remember getting up.

He stands there and stares, paralyzed, confused, not knowing what it means, but knowing it’s bad without knowing why.

Down the hall, he hears the clop of boots heading in his direction.

Dean is coming.

It suddenly seems really important that Dean not know about this. Ben races back into the room, snatches the blankets off the floor, and dumps them back onto the bed. He throws himself down and grabs his shoes, starts tugging them on like he isn’t in the middle of a huge freak out.

A shadow falls into the room.

“Oh, hey. You’re up.” Dean flicks on the light. “I was just coming to get you up. You hungry?”

Ben shrugs as he casually ties his shoe. “Not really.”

Dean drifts closer, and Ben tenses. “You’re shivering.”

He is shivering. His shoulders are shaking hard, and his teeth are chattering like a cartoon character stuck out in the snow. 

Ben drops his foot to the floor and pulls the other to his knee. “It’s cold in here.”

“Not that cold.” Dean is quick, hand darting out to feel his head before Ben can dodge him. Reminds him of the not-doctor at the clinic, and this time, when he shivers, it isn’t from the cold. “You still have that fever.”

Ben pulls away in irritation, goes back to the shoe lace. “Yeah, so?”

Dean just sighs and scrubs his hand over his mouth. “All right, well, I’m going to fix something to eat, and you’re going to eat it, whether you’re hungry or not. Come on.”

Ben barely manages to grab his hoodie before Dean is herding him through the maze of hallways and into the silver kitchen. Dean sits him at the table while he pulls stuff out of the fridge, dumping a carton of eggs and a package of bacon and a couple other things on the counter. 

“Eggs and bacon all right?” 

It actually sounds like the worst idea he’s ever heard, but Dean’ll freak if he doesn’t eat. “Yeah. Sure.” 

Ben puts his head down, pillowing his head on one arm, and lets his eyes drift shut. He feels light and floaty, like he does when he’s hanging on the edge of sleep. He’s so tired. He feels like he could sleep forever, wouldn’t even mind it, even though he knows he has had more sleep in the last twenty-four hours than he really needs. He’s pretty sure the fever - the hundred and five degree fever - is to blame. Well, the fever and the trauma of the past four weeks. But he can’t find it in himself to care. He just hopes Dean doesn’t come at him with a thermometer because he’ll lose his shit if he sees how high his temperature is.

“Come here,” Dean says, barely audible over the water running in the sink. 

Ben is too comfortable to get up and ignores him. 

“Just a taste,” Dean says a few minutes later over the sound of bacon sizzling as it hits the hot pan, which is a weird thing to say, even if it almost but not quite makes sense in the kitchen. Maybe Dean is talking to himself? He does that sometimes when he’s cooking or working on the car. 

Ben can’t help it; he raises his head and says, “What did you say?”

Dean looks back over his shoulder. “Huh?”

“You said something.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did.”

“No, I didn’t.

Ben glares. 

Dean holds up his hands, one hand fisted around a spatula. “Dude, I really didn’t say anything.”

“Whatever.” Ben drops his head back to his arm, irritated. Dean had totally said something. 

He is just getting comfortable again, like really, really comfortable, when Dean sucks in a sharp gasp and mutters _motherfucker_ , both of which Ben does hear this time, very loud and very clear. He jerks up, a thrill rippling down his spine, somehow knowing, just knowing, that something is wrong. Dean is wrapping a paper towel around his finger, and the information flickers across Dean’s phantom wounds like news headlines scrolling across the bottom of a TV screen – a small, shallow cut across the pad of his middle finger, blood welling out of it, and a sharp sting out of proportion to the size of the wound.

It’s nothing, Ben can see it’s nothing, hardly even worth anti-bacterial cream and a band-aid, but he’s still up and moving towards Dean--

Things go black for a second. 

And then Ben is standing at the sink, holding Dean’s hand under the kitchen faucet, and Dean is speaking to him all calm and even, _Ben_ and _kiddo_ and _Hey, snap out of it_ , even though that wound in his side is pretty much dumping phantom blood all over the floor. 

Ben blinks at him, hyperaware of the scent of frying bacon and the rush of the water in the sink and Dean’s hand, clenched in his. 

He drops Dean’s hand like it’s on fire.

“Sorry,” he mutters. He steps back, his face hot. “I..I don’t know-“

“Dude, it’s okay. It’s just a little cut.” Dean takes charge of his own hand, pulling it out from under the water and drying his hand on a kitchen towel. “You okay?”

Ben nods, even though they both know he’s lying.

Dean gives him a fake smile that does nothing to hide his distress, and ruffles his hair affectionately. Ben leans into it, soaking up the comfort, until he remembers he’s mad at Dean and jerks away.

Hurt flashes across Dean’s face before he shutters it away behind a fake smile. “I’m sautéing some onions. Want some? Or are onions still a no go?”

“Onions are fine.” Ben’s voice comes out like a croak. He clears his throat, and what comes out next sounds a lot better. “And don’t let anything touch.”

“Yeah, yeah. I remember all your weird food rules. Go sit down,” Dean says with a nod towards the table. “It shouldn’t be long now.”

Ben shuffles back over to the table. His hands are shaking, and he shoves his hands into the pockets of his hoodie as he watches Dean move back and forth, chopping onions and tossing them into the skillet with a paper towel wrapped tightly around the cut on his finger.

Ben puts his head down and lets his eyes drift closed again.

* * *

A little past two in the morning, Sam plops down on the creaky motel bed and stares at the map of the U.S. tacked to the wall. He doesn’t usually do his research this way; this had been their dad’s method, covering the walls of nondescript motel rooms with maps and newspaper articles and hand scrawled notes. But once he had figured out the parameters of his search and picked out the pattern, once the murders had passed the dozen mark and the range of the victims’ ages and locations had increased, Sam realized he needed to see the whole picture and broke out the sticky notes and thumbtacks.

He doesn’t have any better idea what killed the children in Indianapolis than his soulless counterpart had had three years ago. What he does have is a list of sixteen more possible victims falling between the ages of 11 and 82, their murders radiating out sloppily from Indianapolis in location and timing. The closer they had been to Indianapolis, the earlier on the timeline they had been killed. The children in Indianapolis were the earliest murders, and the murders in Charlotte, a freshman in the nursing program at UNC Charlotte and a high school senior with a full ride to Julliard, seem to be the most recent.

In between, there had been a chiropractor in Cincinnati, a med student in Ann Arbor, a nurse in Cleveland, and a biology high school teacher in Canton, Ohio. Then three people in Pittsburgh – a high school choral director, a street musician, and the guitarist in a locally famous band. Four more died in New York City; one had been a student at Julliard, another a professor of music history at NYU, and the other two had been an obstetrician and a world renowned heart surgeon. Not long after came a biomechanical engineer in St. Louis, a retired horse vet in Kentucky, and a hospice nurse in rural Arkansas. An up and coming country music singer in Nashville was next, then a pediatrician and a psychiatry intern in Baltimore only three months ago.

The nature of their professions hadn’t escaped Sam’s notice. They had all been unusually gifted in music or in medicine, though there seemed to be a handful of other talents among them. There had been the thirteen –year-old seer in Indianapolis and her twin sister the interpreter, of course. The nurse in Cleveland had been, according to a blog post by her best friend after her death, uncannily accurate with a tarot deck. The vet in Kentucky had been a champion archer in his youth, and the colleagues of the hospice worker in Arkansas had been quoted in the article about her murder as saying that she had always known down to the minute when their patients would pass on.

On that alone, he feels confident that they were all siblings of some kind. His current theory is that they were all fathered by some kind of supernatural brood parasite. It had used human DNA to breed its young, all but cloning them so that the human father would keep them in the nest. He’s also pretty sure that’s why they were killed; souls were worth a lot in heaven and hell and all points in between, but souls with a little more magic in them? Probably pretty pricey in the trade. 

After a few minutes of staring, Sam gets up and stabs another tack into Indianapolis; David Lawrence had a stupidly high success rate for his field, and he had gone missing not long after he had been identified as a suspect. After a moment, he reluctantly sticks one in Battle Creek for Ben. He spends another five minutes staring at the map, wondering if he is missing some other pattern, and if it would be worth it to research any of the victims’ lives to see if delving any deeper would help. 

Eventually, he decides to walk away for a while, hoping that a little distance might give him some more insight. He brushes his teeth, has a shower, pulls on a t-shirt and a clean pair of jeans. He throws away his left over Chinese in the first trashcan he can find outside so the room won’t smell like fried batter and soy sauce in the morning and stops at the vending machines for a Coke on the way back. He drinks half the soda, pours out the rest, and brushes his teeth again. He repacks his duffle, throws out a threadbare, unmatched sock with a hole in the heel that probably belongs to Dean, because, you know, hole in the heel.

Then he stares at the map for a few more minutes and finds he has no more perspective than he had before.

Finally he turns to the laptop. He only has one more thing to research before he has to give in and accept that his working theory about what fathered the victims marked by brightly colored thumb tacks on his map is true.

He types the name Acestor into Google, clicks on the first link that pops up, and yeah. He’s right.

He just doesn’t know how he’s going to break the news to Dean.

Even if Lisa could remember this happening, this is one of those things she would never tell Ben:

She watches him for a long time before she approaches.

He’s younger than she typically goes for. It usually takes a few more years of hard living than this one has seen to get them rough and hard the way she likes, to turn them into the kind of sharp-edged alpha male that lights her up. But all his trappings are right: the battered leather jacket, the fuck-you-stupid swagger, and the grin that promises you’ll like it. He’s almost too pretty, with his Disney princess eyes and those plump girly lips, but he manages to stay on the right side of masculine even with his delicate bone structure.

She can’t wait to get that gorgeous face all sloppy and wet between her legs.

She takes her beer and drifts closer, stops at the juke box and pretends to browse the songs while she gets a better look. He’s playing eight ball with a grizzled old biker, all his loveliness thrown into stark contrast against the biker’s stringy salt-and-pepper hair and missing teeth. He’s losing badly, his body language telegraphing his frustration and impatience every time he scratches at the corner pocket or the seven ball is just a centimeter too far to the left, and when the biker sinks two balls with one shot, Pretty Boy drops his head and swears.

She can’t say why, but she’s almost certain he’s hustling.

She admires his ass as he leans over the table for his next shot – the nine ball just barely misses the hole – and when he straightens, walks around the table to the high top where his beer is sitting, he catches her looking. 

Interest flares in his eyes. His eyes skitter down her body and up again. He licks his lips. Smirks at her knowingly.

She bites her lip, raises her eyebrows at him expectantly. Takes a very suggestive drink of her beer. Nods towards the biker as if asking whose companionship he wants more.

Pretty boy flashes a panty-dropping smile. “Give me a minute, here, sweetheart.”

And then, like promise of getting laid is all he needs, he clears the table, sinks the eight ball, and collects his winnings from the biker who is too stupefied by his sudden loss to get angry.

“Buy you a drink?” he says, tucking the wad of cash into the inner pocket of his jacket.

She lifts one shoulder in a half-shrug. “Sure. Or we could skip that part and get right to the fucking.”

He barks out a startled laugh, those beautiful green eyes sparkling with delight in the light thrown off by the buzzing Budweiser sign above their heads. His usual lays probably aren’t quite so blunt, but Lisa wants him, and why waste time flirting when she knows he’s a sure thing? 

“In that case, my car is in the lot. We can go wherever you want.”

She licks her lips hungrily and nods, lets him lead her out into the cold October night with a chivalrous hand at the small of her back. His ride is a vintage Chevy in cherry condition, a sleek and gleaming scorpion black under the sodium lights of the parking lot. He opens the door for her like a gentleman, but when he slides in on the driver’s side, she doesn’t bother acting like a lady, just climbs into his lap and gets to work getting him all sloppy.

He gets her off with his hand down the front of her jeans while _Zeppelin IV_ plays low on the tape deck; she blows him after, dragging out tantalizing moans and devoutly uttered profanity. It’s good and hot and dirty – she made an excellent damned choice, thank you very much – but where she would usually kick her quick fucks out of bed, so to speak, with this one, she goes against every ounce of good sense, against every rule she has made for herself about the men she picks up in the dark, gritty bars she prefers, and takes him home. They fuck through the night, and in the morning, she calls in sick, claiming the flu, and spends the rest of the weekend in bed with him.

It’s beyond good. It’s fantastic. The best yet. The best ever, in fact, but she doesn’t know that yet.

Another thing she will never tell Ben.

She sends him away Sunday morning after one last go in the shower and a lingering goodbye kiss. She spends the rest of the day sleeping and watching bad movies on TV, enjoying the ache of her body, the lassitude of being well laid.

When the knock comes Sunday night just after she has resolved herself to going back to work, she is surprised to see him on the other side of the door, one hand rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly, casting a pleading look from under his girl-pretty lashes.

“Car broke down on my way out of town. Think you could put me up for one more night?”

Lisa smiles and bites her lip, steps aside to let him in.

She doesn’t know it then, but the man she lets into her loft isn’t Dean Winchester.

He isn’t a man at all.


	9. Chapter 9

Sam looks up from surfing a mythology website of questionable reliability to see a pool of insidious coffee spreading towards his laptop.

“Hey!” He snatches it up, holding it above the spill. The waitress, young and blonde and maybe twenty if that, starts and jerks the coffee pot away. 

“Oh! Sorry! I got distracted.” She hastily digs a handful of napkins out of the dispenser on his table and slaps them down on the spill, keeping the coffee from spilling over the edge of the table and into Sam’s lap. “My sister lives in Savannah, and we haven’t heard from her yet, and just sorry. Uh, let me go get a rag.”

She disappears into the kitchen, no explanation for her non-sequitur about her sister, and for the first time, Sam notices the empty tables around him, the still, almost solemn silence of the diner. A handful of customers and staff are crowding around the register, all heads turned towards the television mounted high on the wall in the corner. CNN is on, showing images of ruined houses and wrecked fishing boats and people picking among the debris. 

“It’s horrible, you know?” The waitress reappears at his elbow with a dishwater gray rag and begins wiping up the spilled coffee. Her expression is grim, her eyes red and puffy. “I mean, when I was a kid, we were living in Mobile when Katrina hit, and that was bad, and I guess all those earthquakes and storms a couple of years back were awful, too, but I don’t know. Can you imagine? Standing with both feet on the ground and then just suddenly being sucked out to sea?”

Sam is feeling a little like that in a metaphorical sense, but he gets that whatever natural disaster was being televised on CNN and upsetting his waitress was big, big enough to have caught the focused attention of everyone in the diner.

“What happened?”

The waitress paused in her fruitless attempt to mop up the mess and gave him an incredulous look.

“You haven’t heard yet?” Her eyes flicker to the laptop as if he should have already known. “The tsunami?”

“The tsunami?” Sam realizes how dumb he sounds, echoing her words, and the look on her face confirms it. “Where?”

“Georgia and Florida, mostly. It wiped out the coast from Hilton Head down to Daytona. They’re saying the body count is already in the thousands. Entire towns don’t even exist anymore. They say the damage is probably going to be worse than the earthquakes in Boston and Portland back in 2010 _combined_.”

“Huh.” They hadn’t seen that level of destruction since Lucifer was walking free. “When did it happen?”

“About eleven last night, not long after I got off of the phone with my sister.” The waitress’s breath hitches, and she drops her eyes. For the first time, Sam notices that her nametag reads Sarah, like some horrible cosmic joke. “Anyway, sorry about the coffee. I’ll bring you a fresh cup. Your food should be about ready now, too.” 

She hustles away, leaving Sam with a feeling of deep unease. The table is passably dry, and Sam pulls a few napkins from the dispenser and wipes up any remaining coffee before he is willing to set the laptop on the table again. He checks his favorite online news sources for more information, and sure enough, a tsunami had hit the coastal regions of Georgia and north Florida at about eleven the night before, following a 8.1 earthquake off the coast. Geologists are baffled because there weren’t any early warning signs, and the Atlantic isn’t usually a hotbed of seismic activity. Additionally, the magnitude of the destruction doesn’t fit the magnitude of the earthquake; apparently an 8.1 would have done considerable damage, but it wouldn’t have done as much damage as this one had. The deaths are already numbered in the hundreds of thousands, and the body count is climbing exponentially. The property damage can’t even begin to be estimated, and the president has already declared a state of emergency. 

Sam is scrolling through some of the pictures of apocalyptic destruction when Sarah reappears with his breakfast and another cup of coffee, then joins the group watching CNN at the front of the room. He has the unsettling sense that the tsunami is important somehow – no early warning on the seismographs could indicate that something supernatural is going on. That was how it had been in those last months before he jumped into the Pit; the earthquakes, the tsunami chain, the volcanic eruptions on the Pacific Rim - they hadn’t given any early warnings, either.

Sam eats quickly, pays his bill at the register up front, and tells Sarah he hopes she hears from her sister soon. A blast of frigid air meets him on his way out; Michigan hasn’t quite caught on that it is spring, yet. The morning sky sits gray and heavy above him as he unlocks the car, shivering in the sharp wind, the oranges and reds of the rising sun glowing through the breaks in the clouds. 

As he waits for the car to warm up, he tries to figure out why the tsunami strikes him as important. There is no good reason to think it has anything to do with what is happening to Ben, but he can’t shake the feeling that the two are connected. It is absurd at best, but he doesn’t believe in coincidences. Ben’s visions and the way the crows had melded into a massive cyclone of feathers on that back road in Georgia, and now a tsunami along the same stretch of I-95 they were on not quite two days ago.

“Do not move.” 

The sensation of another being popping into existence next to him is abrupt, no flutter of angel’s wings as warning nor the smell of sulfur, just the almost pleasant scent of trees and wet leaves and a dark person shape in the corner of his eye. Sam has some reflexive thoughts of going for the demon killing knife in his coat pocket, but the edge of a sharp blade pressed against his throat circumvents any follow through. “I will not harm you.”

“Well, the knife at my throat says otherwise.” His voice is calm, solid. He isn’t scared, not really, but he is wary, and his fingers flex with the desire to reach into his coat pocket anyway. 

Slight pressure on his skin forces him to turn his head, to face his visitor.

Her femme fatale assassin look is incongruous in the polyester and plastic interior of the rented Toyota, but she is beautiful in the way of so many of the creatures they meet are, fantastically perfect at a distance but so very alien when you really look at them. She studies him shrewdly, her pornographically red lips pressed together in deep thought. He feels an odd tug of attraction towards her, but it isn’t desire precisely, more like a visceral compulsion to please her.

Sam doesn’t particularly care for it; it reminds him too much of his hunger for demon blood.

“Artemis,” he says.

“Sam Winchester.” She draws the blade back a fraction of an inch. “I need your knowledge of Judeo-Christian magic.”

That is certainly not what he was expecting to hear. “What?”

“There are questions I can’t answer on my own. I need you to come with me.” Her blade does not stray from his throat, but her free hand reaches over the barrier of the armrest to touch the back of his wrist -

He is suddenly standing on the front walk of a huge brick house with white shutters and dark windows. Nearly identical houses line the street in either direction; the only differences are the type of SUV in the driveway and minor variations in the neatly manicured lawns. It could be any suburban middle class neighborhood anywhere in the country; up and down the street he can see joggers and dog walkers and parents herding their kids into cars to take them to school, all bundled up against the early spring chill. 

“Where are we?” he asks Artemis, standing beside him and even more out of place in her Bond girl get up in this bustling suburban neighborhood than she had been in the car. Her blade is nowhere to be seen.

“Muncie, Indiana.” She starts up the front walk. “Come.” 

Sam hesitates, all of his training telling him that entering an apparently empty house with a pagan goddess after being teleported hundreds of miles in a split second is a bad idea. But his instincts are telling him to follow, because she’s brought him to Muncie, which is, if he remembers correctly, only about an hour from both Indianapolis and Cicero. Kind of a coincidence, that.

There isn’t really a choice here, all things considered. 

Sam follows.

* * *

It’s the typical mass produced middle class suburban house: laminate counters, huge rooms with high ceilings, crown molding, and recessed lighting. The tiled foyer opens up into a carpeted living room on the right and a stairway leading to the second floor to the left. Heavy blackout curtains cover the windows. The house has been closed up for a very long time; the musty scent of dust and damp carpeting hangs in the air, stale and heavy.

Also, every surface is covered with runes and sigils.

It’s an impressive art project; the walls, the floors, even the ceiling are covered with the symbols of a dozen different religions. He recognizes many at sight, but there are others he doesn’t recognize at all. He sees some Enochian, some Japanese and Norse, but most are Mediterranean, pagan protections against discovery, the evil eye, unwelcome onlookers, and nosey neighbors. 

“Someone didn’t want this house to be found,” Sam says, eyeing a line of what he thinks might be Hittite protection glyphs climbing up the stairwell wall. “How did you find it?”

“The same way you find these things. I went hunting. This way.”

Artemis leads him further into the house. Sam trails her through the living room and into a dining room with a gaudy chandelier thick with spider webs. Their footsteps echo back at them; the house is bare of furniture, and the sound ricochets off every surface. In the kitchen, the steady plunk of a dripping faucet is a constant tattoo, and there are dark, rusty stains splattered across the cabinets. 

Artemis flicks her wrist at a door in the short hallway off the kitchen, and it opens to her will, revealing a flight of wooden stairs that disappear into a dark basement. Sam follows her down uneasily. Something powerful is down there; he can feel it washing against his skin, like water sloshing against the side of a boat. 

At the foot of the stairs, Sam stops and stares. 

The most elaborate devil’s trap he has ever seen is drawn out on the basement floor, and inside, a demon in its black smoke form throwing itself repeatedly against the barrier, quick and violent like a swarm of angry bees. He doesn’t know if the power he feels is from the demon or the trap, but he suspects the trap. Generally speaking, the more intricate the design, the more likely it’s meant for long term demon enslavement rather than mere entrapment, and that requires a hell of a lot more power.

“I take it this is the Judeo-Christian magic you were talking about?”

“Yes.” Artemis stands at the edge of the trap, frowning at the demon. “What is it? It hums with power.”

“It’s a devil’s trap.” Sam walks the circumference of it, marveling at the intricate detailing, the pentagram in the middle, the six concentric circles around it, two filled with swooping, unrecognizable sigils, the rest filled with writing that is powerfully familiar. Someone with a lot of patience and a steady hand drew this trap. “For trapping demons.”

Artemis huffs impatiently, a strangely human sound. “Obviously it’s for trapping demons. I mean, what is it for? Even I recognize that this is not...” In frustration she gestures at the demon at the center of the trap. “...normal.” 

“No. It isn’t. Demons don’t spend a lot of time on this plane without possessing a host.” Sam stops, stuffs his hands in his pockets, takes a minute to consider the problem at hand. “Do you recognize the writing?”

She shakes her head. “It isn’t a language used by any of my worshippers.”

“Right.” Sam sighs. Dean will have to pull research duty on this one. He snaps off several pictures of the trap with his cell phone, gets some close ups of the writing and the sigils, and emails them to Dean. 

Sam drops the phone back into his pocket and starts back up the stairs. “Let’s see what else is here.”

“There’s nothing of interest.” Sam hears her tread on the stairs behind him, feels the tug of her power at his back as she follows him up. “I’ve checked all the rooms already.”

“Well, I’m going to check them again.”

Artemis says nothing else, just leans in the kitchen doorway, arms crossed and hips canted, watching with an air of impatience as Sam goes through all of the cabinets. She hovers with sharp eyes as he investigates the garage and hall closets and the remaining rooms downstairs, finds only a dead roach in the half-bath under the stairs and a can of devilled ham in a kitchen cabinet. Then she is right behind him on the stairs to the second floor, the air of the stairwell heavy with her power.

Mostly, he ignores her; he and Dean don’t have a great track record with gods, but Artemis isn’t hostile, and she had been reasonable – for a god, anyway - when they had encountered her last time. He isn’t pleased that he has been press ganged into her service, but between the demon trap downstairs, demon included, and his list of two dozen murder victims, a handful of them killed not more than an hour away, her involvement can’t be just a coincidence. 

Not to mention the fact that three years ago, he and Dean had been captured by a group of gods not far from Muncie with the intention of blackmailing the angels into stopping the Apocalypse. It hadn’t turned out too well for them, but he can’t ignore that coincidence, either. 

It’s frustrating as hell not knowing how this all fits together.

The two bedrooms upstairs are bare of anything but sigils and dust, but in the master bedroom, he hits the jackpot: a bare mattress splotched with black stains, sigils on the walls, and a heap of books scattered on the floor.

Just as Ben had said.

Sam crouches next to the books and starts stacking them, looking for the green book with the duct tape binding. There are a couple of books he had only seen in Bobby’s collection, several in languages he doesn’t recognize, and a copy of one Chuck’s _Supernatural_ books, which, just, come on. He finally sees the frayed duct tape binding under a huge grimoire that probably should be burned post-haste and a dog eared copy of the King James’s Bible.

Sam tugs it out and stands. The book is written in what he thinks might be Turkish, which he can’t read, but the illustrations seem to indicate it’s an academic treatise on demonology. He flips through the musty pages, studying the various sigils, devil’s traps, and ritual maps and wishing for the slightest inkling of what the captions say.

Artemis drifts closer. “What have you found?” 

“I don’t know. I recognize this language, but can’t read it.” He presents the book to her. “Can you?” 

Artemis gives him a look that reminds him of the way the angels, Castiel included, used to look at him, like he is something she needs to scrape off her shoe. “I am not a scribe.”

“Maybe not, but you’re the one who brought me to help you. Can you read it or not?” 

She lets out another of those impatient huffs and snatches the book from his hand. She glares at the page for a moment, but her shoulders loosen fractionally when she realizes what she’s looking at. “This is the symbol downstairs.”

“Yeah. Can you read it?”

“Yes.” She studies the page a moment. “It is a symbol used by the ancient Babylonians to control the destination of a corrupted soul. It allows the sorcerer not only to trap the demon but to force it to do his bidding. If the demon is exorcised while outside the confines of the symbol, it will return to the trap rather than the underworld.” She stops, frowns, her eyes distant as she makes some kind of connection Sam is not privy to. “So that’s how he did it.” 

“How who did what?”

Artemis looks up sharply, glances sidelong at the books. “Thank you, Sam,” she says, and reaches for him.

“No, wait!” Sam says, but the words are spoken from the driver’s seat of the rental car, and Artemis is once again a study in the surreal against the gray interior. The car is still idling, the interior warmed now, and beyond the windshield, the day is a little brighter. The book is nowhere to be seen.

“What the hell?” Sam snaps, irritated. “I wasn’t done.”

“Maybe not, but I have all I need to know.”

“All you need to-“ Sam has to stop, suck in a deep breath, and tell himself not make the goddess sitting in the passenger seat of his rented Toyota as furious as he is. He’s seen her power before, just a few weeks ago, in fact, and he doesn’t have any back up at the moment. “Look. We’re hunting the same thing and you know it. I get that demon is being used to kill a very specific group of people, but who’s pulling the strings?” 

Artemis tilts to the side, the slight curl of her lips hinting at fond amusement. “Are you aware that if you and your brother were to worship me with even the smallest of libations and prayers, I could expedite your hunts one thousand fold? With your training and innate abilities, there would be no creature able to elude your grasp.”

Sam stares at her, stunned. She’s _propositioning_ him. Now, when he’s trying to figure out what kind of monster is hunting Ben and kids – people – like Ben, and she’s hitting him up for worship like a junky trying to score a fix. Which, given, is better than trying to kill him, but it doesn’t piss him off any less. 

“Yeah? And what would we get if we offered a prayer to Acestor?” 

The amusement falls off her face, her jaw tightens. She suddenly seems muted, smaller, more human. Even the vividness of her red lipstick seems to have faded.

“Nothing.” Her voice is unnaturally steady, a steel door slammed shut over intense pain. “He’s dead.”

Surprise cuts through Sam’s anger. Not surprise that there’s another dead god – he and Dean had seen plenty dead gods in their time, and in several cases, had made them that way – but surprise that he so easily recognizes her grief. He remembers the weight of it, its inescapable, piercing presence, first when Dean went to Hell, the later, when he was dragged into Purgatory in the wake of Dick Roman’s death.

Sam sighs. He’s going about this the wrong way. All witnesses want to talk, even ancient goddesses of the hunt, but he’s not going to get anything out of her if he’s functioning on a razor thin edge of anger.

Also, he can’t help but to sympathize with her a little bit.

“I’m sorry,” he says, quiet and gentle. 

Artemis looks away, at some distant point beyond the windshield. “As am I.”

Sam gives her a minute, just long enough for her grief to settle, but not long enough for her to get her defenses back up. “Look, I can help. You know I can help. Just tell me what killed those people.”

She sighs, shakes her head. “Sam, you can’t fight what killed those people. I’m not even sure I can fight what killed those people. You should return to your brother and protect the boy.”

Sam’s blood runs cold. “You know about Ben?”

Now she’s turning a look of sympathy on him, pity even. “He’s the most powerful child we have had in three millennia. Of course I know about Ben. We all know about Ben.”

“We, Artemis? Who is we?”

“Be silent, Sam.” Artemis’s voice is mild, an echo of Sam’s earlier sympathy, but the order behind it cuts through Sam, into that sliver of his soul that she can command as the goddess of the hunt. His throat closes on his words, his mouth snaps shut. 

Sam glares at her, mute and properly furious.

She leans into his space; her lips are shiny red, her presence heavy, and the compulsion to please her is tugging at him again.

“I don’t have time to answer your questions right now. He has already devoured twenty-four divine children, and he took Poseidon last night. I can’t even begin to guess how strong he is, but I do know that even if you found him, there would be nothing you could do except die horribly. So stop hunting him and go home. You and your brother are my only allies in this. Many of my siblings won’t speak to me after what I did to our father, and those who will don’t believe me, so I need you both to concentrate on protecting Ben.” 

The knife reappears in her hand and is pressed into the soft spot under his chin. “And let me make myself clear on this. This is not your hunt, it is mine. You will go to wherever you have hidden Ben and protect him with your life.” 

The blade presses further into his flesh, biting but not cutting. “When we last met, you told your brother that I was your goddess. I am aware that you were being rhetorical, but disobey me, Samuel Winchester, and you will find how very much your goddess I really am.”

And with that she’s gone, the pleasant scent of pine and fresh loam the only evidence that she was ever there.

* * *

Dean is checking the locks again.

“I’m pretty sure the house is locked up, Dean.” Ben plops down on the guest room bed and watches him fiddle with the latch on the window. Dean’s been doing this for a while now, going from room to room, rattling door knobs and wrestling with windows. Ben is getting a little tired of it, should probably go off and do something on his own since Dean is obviously not interested in him. But he can’t help following him around like a kicked puppy, hoping for some affection.

Ben kind of hates himself for it.

“Why don’t we go watch a movie or something?” Strike kind of. He totally hates himself. “I got the _Batman_ trilogy for Christmas.”

Dean presses the heels of his hands up under the frame and tries to force the pane up. His muscles are straining hard, but the window doesn’t budge. “Not now, Ben.”

Ben huffs. “Why not? We’ve been through the house, what, four times now? I’m pretty sure nothing can get in.”

With his own huff of frustration, Dean drops his arms and backs away from the window. Ben can’t see his face, but his shoulders are tense, his fists clenched.

“I’m not trying to prevent anything from coming in,” he says absently, his mind clearly on other things. “I’m trying to get out.”

Ben feels like he’s been kicked in the chest. “Yeah, no. I get it.” 

He heaves himself up off the bed, goes towards the door. His eyes are burning, his vision going all swimmy. He doesn’t need a dad, never has, and why he keeps hanging around Dean, hoping....

Behind him, Dean sighs. “Ben, wait.”

Ben turns, and Dean is holding out a bottle of Ibuprofen.

“Here, kiddo, take these.”

Ben holds out his hand and watches, confused, as Dean shakes a couple of pills into palm. He’s somehow sitting on the bed in Dean’s room, dressed in a t-shirt and Dean’s track pants, shivering. He’s not sure where the window went. 

“I thought you were trying to get out.” 

Dean recaps the ibuprofen and sets the bottle on the night stand, casting a look of confusion Ben’s way. “Get out of where?” 

“The house.”

Dean presses a glass of water into Ben’s free hand. “What house?”

“The one in Cicero.” Ben takes the glass; it’s cold and damp on his skin. “The guest room window wouldn’t open.”

Dean stares at him hard. “Ben you were dreaming. Take those.”

Ben looks down at his hands, at the pair of orange NSAIDs just sitting on his palm, at the glass of water cold and slippery in his hand, and remembers what he’s supposed to be doing. 

“Right,” he mutters, and dutifully tips the pills into his mouth.

They are dully sweet, but the water is sweeter, cool and crisp. He downs it all in one go. The pills aren’t going to do much for him; his temperature is at one-oh-seven and climbing, and his body is way past the stage where the ibuprofen can do anything for him. But the water helps a lot; dehydration is setting in, his fever devouring the moisture in his body, and he can almost literally feel the water molecules being absorbed into his blood stream.

Dean is watching him with a critical eye. “Any future dreams?”

Ben shakes his head. “No. I haven’t had one of those since you fixed them.”

“Since I fixed them?” Dean says it weird, all slow and cautious. The phantom wound on his side is bleeding all over the place, but that’s pretty much standard now, and Ben can’t seem to read what’s bothering him in his wounds. 

“What?” he asks.

Dean starts to say something, a reply clearly posed on his lips, but the ring of his phone distracts him from answering. He fishes it out of his back pocket, glances at the screen.

“It’s Sam. I’m going to talk to him. Why don’t you get up, and I’ll make us some breakfast?” 

Ben nods. “Okay.”

Dean answers the phone, cutting off the guitar-riff ringtone as he turns away, heads for the door.

“Hey,” Dean says, the sound of his voice dwindling as he moves away from the room.

Ben looks at the open door, then the bed, then the open door again. The bed wins, and Ben lies back down, pulls the blanket up to his chin. He’ll just close his eyes for just a few more minutes, no need to rush...

“Come here,” Dean says from the front door. He’s flipping the dead bolt back and forth, tugging frantically at the knob, trying to get it to open. 

“Why? There’s nothing I can do to help you.” Ben flops back on the couch and sighs loudly and dramatically, making sure Dean knows how displeased he is. He wipes away the sweat dribbling down his forehead with the back of his arm. It’s really hot for some reason. “We’re obviously trapped in here together.”

“Ben, stop answering it,” Dean says, just before he steps back and kicks the door; the door shudders in the frame, but doesn’t seem any more inclined to open than it was before.

“Answering what?”

“Come back here,” a voice says, and this time Ben realizes it isn’t Dean speaking, but someone else, someone who’s close by. Maybe in the kitchen?

“That.” Dean goes to the front window and yanks the curtains open. It’s dark outside, so dark that Ben can’t see the porch or the lawn or the street. Neither his nor Dean’s reflection are visible in the glass. 

Ben wipes away another dribble of sweat.

“Please,” the voice says again, whiney and desperate. It sounds like it’s coming from the dining room. “You’re so close, just come here and let me out.”

Ben frowns, and sits up. “Who is it? 

“I promise to be good,” the voice says in the same pleading tone Lucy uses when she wants him to put in one of her Disney movies when he’s trying to watch golf. “Just let me out.”

“No one and nothing,” Dean says, tracing the seam of the window with his fingertips. “Just ignore it, and it will stop.”

Ben gets up and goes to the doorway, ignoring Dean. The dining room is dark and still, the table and chairs like spindly legged aliens in the darkness. 

“Mom?” he calls hopefully. 

He wipes a droplet of sweat tricking under his ear on his shoulder and reaches for the light switch. 

A bright light suddenly shines in his eyes. 

Ben squints in the brightness, wincing at the light, moving and jumping and making sounds, but then the sounds resolve into voices and the moving lights become people. The TV on top of Dean’s dresser is on the news, blaring flickering light directly into his eyes. Ben blinks, letting his eyes adjust, his brain finally sorting the chattering newscasters and the images of palm trees and destroyed houses into something he can understand. 

Apparently, there was a tsunami in Florida and Georgia.

Ben watches for a while, vaguely curious, the three blankets Dean had added to the bed a comfortable weight forming a cocoon of warmth around him. It’s nice, cozy. But when the anchor starts going on about a fire in Chicago, Ben loses interest, rolls onto his side to find Dean is propped up against the headboard, legs stretched out in front of him. A big, moldy book with yellowish pages lies open on his lap. He is wiggling his toes slowly, his toes undulating in his mismatched socks, and he seems completely absorbed in what he’s reading.

Ben’s glad he’s finally stopped trying to get out.

“About time you woke up.” Dean looks over at Ben. “How are you feeling?”

“Sleepy.”

“Uh-huh, I noticed.” Dean reaches for Ben, the book sliding sideways off Dean’s lap into the gap between them.

Ben automatically yanks his hand up, blocking Dean’s. His fever is at one-oh-nine now, and that’s going to freak Dean out. He’s at the point where he should be at a hospital, should probably be having convulsions and hallucinating, but there’s just this overwhelming exhaustion and sluggishness, this desire to close his eyes and never wake up. There’s something unnatural about that, but he doesn’t have the energy to care.

Dean looks irritated, but he backs down. He reaches for the book instead, and Ben sees that it isn’t in English. 

“Is that Latin? I didn’t know you could read Latin.” Ben is impressed. Like really, really impressed. Dean had always been all about Ben doing all his homework and keeping his grades up in school, but it always seemed like Dean didn’t care for it much himself. Ben knew he had only gotten a GED, and that’s something you get when you don’t finish high school, so he didn’t think Dean was all that into nerdy stuff. Not that he had never thought Dean was dumb, the opposite, actually, but Latin? Dean was way smarter than Ben thought.

“I can get by.” Dean picks up the book, snaps it closed, and sets it on the table next to the bed. “Sam is much better at it.” 

“What are you reading about?”

Dean shrugs offhandedly. “Just some stuff that Sam asked me to look up. Nothing you need to worry about. Think you can you sit up for me?”

Ben considers that a moment. His body feels heavy, and he isn’t ready to leave the cocoon of warmth, but yeah, he probably can. He struggles to pull his body upright and eventually gets himself propped up against the headboard. 

“Can you stay awake long enough for me to go get you some water and something to eat? You’re going to get dehydrated if you don’t have something.”

Ben ponders that a moment. “Do you have any peanut butter?”

Dean smirks. “You and Sam. Yeah, we’ve got peanut butter. It’s that natural hippy crap, but I think it’s the same kind your mom always buys. Peanut butter toast, right?”

Ben nods. He doesn’t want it, eating seems less interesting today than it did last night, but Dean is obviously relieved that he gets to feed him, and peanut butter toast is the least offensive thing he can think of.

Dean gets up off the bed and jams his feet back into his boots. “Stay awake, Ben, okay? You need to eat something and drink some water before you go back to sleep.”

“Okay,” he says, and Dean casts a distrustful look over his shoulder as he disappears into the hallway. 

Ben pulls the blankets up to his neck, trying to reestablish his cocoon of warmth, and huddles against the headboard. The news anchor is talking about the state of the economy since last year’s stock market crash caused by Dick Roman’s disappearance, and then there are a bunch of old white guys in suits, arguing about whether the market is recovering or not.

Ben sighs, bored. He folds his arms on the kitchen counter and puts his head down instead. It feels like it weighs about a hundred pounds, and it’s exhausting keeping it upright.

“I don’t think that is going to work,” Ben tells Dean, his voice muffled against his arm. 

Dean’s got the putter he and Mom got him for his birthday raised up over his shoulder like a baseball bat, aiming it at the window in the kitchen door. He has kicked and hit and rattled every window and door in the house with no result. Ben has no idea why he thinks this will work.

“There has to be a way out.” Dean swings the putter around slowly towards the glass, checking his aim. “It’s dangerous for me to stay.”

“God, you’re such a dick,” Ben says. “The least you could do is quit lying to me.”

“I’m not – “ Dean swings the putter, this time with the full force of his strength, and it bounces of the pane harmlessly, the glass rattling but not breaking, “-lying to you.”

Dean steps back and drops the putter with a clatter. He mutters something that sounds nothing like English, though Ben can tell from the tone that he’s swearing, and pretty filthily at that. Ben has half a mind to tell him to throw some money in the swear jar like Mom would, but he’s just called Dean a dick without having to pay out himself, so he just settles for saying told you so.

“Told you so.” Ben lifts his hundred pound head and wipes at the sweat tricking from his hairline into his eyes. It’s really hot in here, now, and he’s completely drenched in sweat, his t-shirt sticking unpleasantly to his back. 

“Ben?” Dean says, sounding concerned. 

He’s just so hot. Ben puts his head back down and closes his eyes. 

“I’m sorry this happened to you.” Dean says again, gentle, and for the first time since he got here, totally focused on him. “I will fix it somehow. I promise.” Ben feels his hand on his forehead – he didn’t see his hand coming, or he would have blocked it – but it feels nice, pleasantly cool against his hot skin. He should pull away on principle, but he’s just too tired to bother. 

“He’s burning up. I haven’t been able to get any fluids in him either. He won’t stay awake long enough.” There’s a warm weight on the bed, the mattress dipping down a little, and Ben figures that must be Dean. “Well, if I had an IV, I’d give it to him, Sam.”

It’s so, so hard to open his eyes, but Ben manages. Dean’s on the phone, his hand resting lightly on Ben’s forehead. His gaze is focused somewhere in the distance, his expressions tense with worry.

“I don’t know about that. The clinic was one thing, but a hospital with a fever this high? They’d admit him, and who knows how deep they would dig into who he is. It would be different if there weren’t missing posters all over the internet.”

Ben wonders if he should let Dean know that going to the hospital won’t be any more effective than the ibuprofen were. His fever is at one-ten, and the hospital might start asking questions about why Ben’s not brain damaged yet. It’s just a bad idea all around.

“Yeah. Okay. I’ll try that.”

Ben wonders what Dean’s going to try, and he finds out a second later when the bathroom door hits the wall with a resounding crack as Dean slams it open. Dean has a grip on his arm with one hand, dragging Ben behind him, and with the other, he’s turning on the shower.

“What the hell are you doing?” Ben asks, struggling fruitlessly against the manhandling.

“Saving your life,” Dean says and shoves him under the spray.

Ben yelps as soon as the water hits his skin. It’s icy cold, drenching his hair and clothes instantly. He blinks against the water running into his eyes and tries to shove his way past the large, person shaped blob that must be Dean.

“No.” Dean pushes him back under, drenching him all over again. His whole body is wracked with shivers, and his teeth are clacking loudly against one another. “I didn’t take that prophecy just to let you die.”

“M’not dying,” Ben pushes through his chattering teeth. 

“You are, and fairly soon if you don’t get this fever under control. Now take control of your body and push the fever down.”

“I don’t even know what that means!” Ben splutters. 

Dean points at the shower wall. “There, see? There’s your thermostat. Set it to 98.6.”

And sure enough, the thermostat is mounted on the tiles, just under the towel rack. Ben hits the down arrow button, and the thermostat beeps its way down to the right temperature.

Light again in his eyes, and cold, searing, horrible cold everywhere, lapping at his skin.

Ben lunges upwards, tries to get away.

“Hey, no, Ben.” Dean grabs him, pushes him back into the numbing cold. “We need to get your temperature down.”

He’s freezing, his body enveloped in icy water, actual ice bumping against him every time he moves. He tries to get up, to get out of the freezing cold ice water again, but Dean has a better grip on him, keeping him in the tub with both hands on his shoulders. He’s half soaked himself, kneeling over the tub like he is.

“Shh, no, Ben, it’s okay.” 

“You’re trying to kill me,” Ben says with a pathetic whine. His body is shivering hard, and the light hurts his eyes, and it’s just so cold.

“Am not. I’m trying to get your fever down.”

A hard, convulsing shiver wracks his body, and he might hate Dean more than ever before, but his temperature is ticking down, slowly but surely. He is down to one-oh-seven; one-oh-six should be along soon.

Ben closes his eyes, lets his head fall back against the lip of the tub. “Now I kind of wish you’d found a way out of the house. Could have gotten some cool air in.”

“I wish I had, too, but if there’s a way out, I couldn’t find it.” The bed dips as Dean sits on the edge and gazes out the window. From this angle, Ben can only see the side of his face, and the window isn’t showing his reflection. “I wish I could figure this out.”

“Figure what out?” Ben shivers and huddles down under his favorite Power Ranger comforter, destroyed when he was eight by the changelings smearing red clay all over it when they dragged him out of bed. His temperature is down to one-oh-four, which is good, though that heavy sluggish feeling still lingers.

“This.” Dean gestures broadly at the room around him, his bedroom in Cicero, with the walls painted dark blue and the glowing stick-on-stars on the ceiling. “Why I’m here.”

Ben hunches his shoulders and rolls over, not willing to let Dean see the hot tears tracking down his cheeks. “Why are you so eager to leave? What did I do that was so wrong? I thought you loved us.”

“Oh, Ben,” Dean says, sadly. “Why won’t you come to me?”

“But I did come to you, Dean. You’re the one who wants to leave,” he mutters into the pillow.

Dean’s hand on his head, brushing back his hair gently like Mom would. He’s mad at Dean, should pull away on principle, but it seems like so much effort and it really does feel nice. 

“I don’t, Ben.” Dean’s voice is thick and raspy, like it used to get whenever Sam came up, before Dean knew he was alive. “I never did. But I’m right here, now. I’m not going anywhere.”

Maybe it’s the exhaustion. Maybe it’s the fever that’s down to one-oh-two and holding steady. Maybe it’s his hope that this time, Dean really will stay. But whatever it is, he believes Dean enough to let himself go to sleep once more.

Hermes is holding out one hand expectantly. “Fifteen sixty-three.”

Ben frowns at the empty hand, confused. “What?”

They are standing in front of the gated entrance of a rich subdivision - huge houses and tall gates and a high, uninviting wall. Royal Palms Plantations is scrawled across the median wall in fancy white letters, and Ben bets his mom will never make enough money for them to live in a gated community like this.

“I can’t buy my own sacrifices.” Hermes wiggles his fingers. “You have to pay me back for this to work. Fifteen dollars and sixty three cents.”

Ben digs into his pocket and pulls out the last of his money. Exactly fifteen dollars and sixty three cents; turns out bus tickets are expensive. His stomach plummets. This has to be some kind of joke, and he remembers that Hermes is the god of tricksters. “Is this some kind of trick?”

“I can see where you might think that, but I am the god of thieves. If I wanted money, I wouldn’t have gone through such an elaborate set up and wasted my energy on a vampire to steal fifteen dollars from a runaway.” He wiggles his fingers again. “Come on, fork it over.”

“M’not a runaway,” Ben mutters. If he weren’t already doubting the wisdom of taking help from a Greek god who apparently hangs around bus stations beheading vampires, he is now.

Hermes shifts impatiently, his annoyance coming through. “Don’t worry. I’m a god, remember? I’ll make sure you are fed and get to where you need to go.”

When Ben continues to stare at him doubtfully, Hermes sighs. “Think of it as a show of faith. It’ll add more kick.”

Against his better judgment, Ben hands him the last of his money. Hermes winks at him, an unsettling gleam in his eye, and hands him the grocery bag. Ben takes a quick look to see what he is going to be sacrificing to Hermes: a bottle of wine with a screw on cap, a bear-shaped bottle of honey, and a can of meat. 

Ben wrinkles his nose in disgust. “Deviled ham?”

Hermes shrugs, a sheepish smile curving his lips. “What can I say? It’s a guilty pleasure. Shall we?”

Hermes waves his hand at the key pad and the gate rumbles open. 

“We’re making the sacrifice here?”

“No. _You_ are making the sacrifice here.” He strolls through the gate, hands in pocket. “You need a boundary marker for this to work. Gated community, piles of stones to demark the boundary, in this case in the form of its wall, and inscribed by a tree sacred to me. Trust me, this is just screaming altar. I’ve been eyeing it for months.”

Uneasily, Ben follows him through, the rumble of the gates closing behind them probably less ominous than it seems.

“This way, young sir,” Hermes says and disappears into a narrow passage between the stone wall and the line of tall, manicured hedges next to it.

Ben hesitates at the curb. The neighborhood houses loom over him, their windows dark. SUVs and BMWs sit silent in driveways. The oak trees sway and whisper in the chilly breeze. Somewhere in the distance, he can hear the _ch-ch-ch_ of sprinklers and the barking of large dogs. 

Hermes pokes his out of the bushes. “Are you coming or not, young sir?”

Ben should turn around right now and walk away. He should just go and not look back, should probably even do it at a run.

Instead he nods and follows him in.

The passage is narrow, giving Ben just enough room to walk straight ahead without scraping his shoulders on the wall or the bushes, but only that. It’s dark as well; Hermes is a person shaped shadow ahead of him, so silent that Ben wouldn’t have known he was there if he weren’t able to see him. Eventually he stops where the passage has opened up into a hollow, a little wider than the passage and partially illuminated by the back porch light of the closest house and a street light on the other side of the wall. It’s just large enough for both of them to stand together.

“Now,” Hermes says, kicking aside leaves and branches and random bits of dead flora to clear a spot on the ground against the wall. “Remove the ham from the can and pour the honey over it.”

Ben grimaces at how weird that is for a sacrifice and gets to work, pulling the pull tab back until the top of the can peels back. The ham is a disgusting dark blob that comes out of the can with a gross sucking noise and plops on the ground with a wet splat. The honey is thick and viscous and takes its sweet time rolling out of the plastic bear. The combination smells awful, pungent and a little spicy. He never thought honey and ham together could be so gross.

“That okay?” he asks when he’s done. 

The weak light gleams on the wet mess of canned ham and honey as Hermes leans in to inspect it with a critical eye. Ben shifts impatiently, waiting for the verdict.

“Perfect, young sir,” Hermes says after what seems like forever. “You’ve done very well. Now you need to pray.”

“Pray?” Ben isn’t sure that he believes that much. “To you?”

“Yes. A simple prayer will do. Something like: I invoke Hermes Hodios, patron of travelers. Guide my steps on your roads, protect me from misfortune, and guard me from weariness. Hail, Hermes, giver of grace, guide, and giver of good things.’ Then you will pour the wine over the ham and honey.”

Ben stares at him, dumbfounded. “Um, I don’t think I can remember all of that.”

Hermes nods. “I thought as much. No matter. I’ll help you. Just make sure you mean it. You really have to believe that I will help you.”

Ben nods, and uses the few seconds it takes to unscrew the cap of the wine bottle to get his head in the right place. _I believe_ , he thinks hard as he can, remembering what he had seen in the bus station bathroom, the winged cap and sandals, the twin snakes, twisting on his staff. This is a god standing next to him; he must be able to help him.

_I believe_ , he thinks, and slowly begins to recite the invocation, looking to Hermes for confirmation. “I invoke Hermes Hodios?”

Hermes nods, gesturing at him to go on.

“I invoke Hermes Hoidos, patron god of travelers...”

Ben goes slowly, carefully reciting as Hermes helps him along, offering him a word here and there to keep him going. At the end he looks up to Hermes for confirmation. “That okay?”

“Perfect. Now come on.” He gestures impatiently. “Pour the wine.”

_I believe_ , he thinks again and raises the wine bottle. The sour, acrid smell of alcohol drifts up from the honey covered ham as the wine glugs-glugs-glugs its way out of the bottle. 

Next to him, Hermes stumbles sideways, catching himself on the wall with one hand.

“Are you okay?” Ben wonders if he messed up the sacrifice; that would be an awful waste of his last fifteen dollars and sixty three cents.

Hermes nods, sort of sloppy, like his friend Derek had the time he came to school drugged up on codeine after having a tooth pulled. 

“Very much so, yes. More than okay. Perfect, actually.” Hermes falls against the wall, lets it take his weight at his shoulder. Ben can see the slash of a drunken grin in the porch light. “Good job, young sir. You gave me exactly the right amount of belief. I feel like I can take on Zeus himself.”

Ben shifts uneasily. “Um, okay. Good.”

Hermes leans his head back against the wall, his eyes now a gleaming gold color under drooping eyelids. He gazes at Ben, and Ben hunches his shoulders, uncomfortable with the scrutiny. 

“Tell me, young sir,” Hermes says at last, “have you been dreaming of the future?”

Ben tenses. “How did you know that?”

“I’m a god, remember? I can see into your soul. And you’ve carrying around the gift of prophecy for a while now. I do wonder how it got there.”

“I don’t know. I just started dreaming.” Ben purposely leaves out remembering Dean just before. He may hate Dean now, but he doesn’t want to draw any attention to him. From what he had gathered, he and Sam weren’t much liked by supernatural beings.

“Hmm. Interesting. Have you tried to use it at all? Have you asked it for help or to show you how to get where you’re going?”

Ben shakes his head. “I didn’t know I could do that.”

“Oh yes, young sir. It’s the nature of your particular gift. A question asked must be answered. Try it. It’s weak right now, like an atrophied muscle. But put it to use, practice with it, and it should plump right up.” Hermes’ sloppy grin sharpens, and Ben finds himself hunching his shoulders again. “You’ll be reeking with power in no time.” 

Ben suddenly wanted to be gone, away from this god and the sacrifice on the ground and his sloppy, drunken smile.

“Is that all I have to do?” Ben hazards a look back the way they came. Hermes is in the way, but there’s enough room that he can slip past him, easy. It just depends on whether Hermes is ready to let him go or not.

“Yes. And it will work for all the things you need – food, lodging, rides.” Hermes follows Ben’s line of sight. “But there are miles to go before you sleep, yes?”

“I guess.”

“Go, then, young sir. I won’t stop you. You’ve given me all I need.” 

“Uh. Thanks.” Ben says, edging past him. “For the help, and uh, everything.”

“Oh, believe me, young sir,” Hermes says, licking his lips like a cat finishing off its prey. “It was all my pleasure.” 

Ben gets past him and bolts back down the narrow passage, his backpack bouncing hard in the small of his back. 

“Enjoy the gift of prophecy!” Hermes calls out behind him, and laughs.

Ben can’t get out of there fast enough.

An hour later, he hauls himself up into the bright colored climbing tubes he has been seeing in his dreams for weeks now. He had nearly cried when he saw them, somehow knowing they were a safe haven for the night, a place to escape. They’re just big enough for him to fit inside on his hands and knees. It’s a tight squeeze, but that means he’s probably pretty safe from any adult sized monsters, human or not. He gets settled under the fleece he took from Aunt Sarah’s and stares up into the darkness, his body more than pleased to be stretched out and still.

He’s freezing and exhausted. He’s broke and terrified. His head is still throbbing from the hit he took when the vampire slapped him down. Dean erased his memories, his mom is missing, and he might have killed Bill with an exorcism. He has been attacked by a demon and a vampire and possibly swindled by a Greek god. 

At this point, it doesn’t seem like he has much to lose.

“Okay,” he says, his voice echoing back at him strangely within the tube. “Weird future dreams, where can I find Dean?”

Ben waits for something to happen, holding his breath. Unsurprisingly, nothing does. 

Miserable, he curls up on his side and hides his face in the blanket, fights back tears of despair because he’s just not going to cry like a little kid. He’s not. The demons and the monsters and Dean don’t get to have his tears.

Eventually, he drifts off despite the cold, and dreams of the usual things: the wings, the book, Dean’s startled, guilty expression, and the gold paint spilling over his hands. They roll on and on as usual, but now there are new dreams in between: a crucifix swinging from a rear view mirror and the strong scent of old lady perfume, a hot blonde, handing out sandwiches, a couple dreadlocked hippies grinning at him from the opened door of a VW bus, a ten dollar bill, caught in a gutter, and finally, Dean standing next to gas pumps as he fills the Impala, the wind from an approaching storm whipping at his clothes, and his voice calling out to him across the distance: “Ben, come here.” 

And in the dream, he goes.


	10. Chapter 10

“Hey,” Dean says, low and raspy, as soon as Sam appears in his doorway.

He is propped up against the headboard, feet crossed at the ankle, the remote in his hand. The TV glazes the room in flickering blue light, and the volume is set to a rumbling murmur. Half a dozen heavy tomes from the library are stacked on the bedside table, and Ben is a comma-shaped lump curled at Dean’s side. A hundred nights come back to Sam, nights curled up in the same position as Ben, sick with the flu or a stomach bug or strep throat, and Dean right there with him, riding it out. 

“Hey.” Sam leans in the doorway, hands in the pockets of his jacket. He keeps his voice quiet, doesn’t want to wake Ben. “How’s he doing?”

“Better. Fever’s way down, and he’s not talking in his sleep anymore.” 

“The ice bath worked?”

“Seemed to.” Dean’s eyes dart back to the TV. “Hey, did you hear about this? Half of Chicago is burning and there was a tsunami in the Atlantic.”

He gestures at the TV with the remote control, and Sam moves into the room to get a better view. CNN again, and this time the news anchors are grimly describing the destruction in Chicago – a fire raging from suburb to suburb, millions evacuated and firefighters unable to staunch the blaze. Images of fire and smoke and cars caught in motionless gridlock out of the city; a shot of Chicago from above, blanketed by a haze of black smoke.

To think he’d passed just south of Chicago on I-80 that morning; it gives Sam pause.

“It’s like that year when Lucifer was loose,” Dean says. “You think the angels are up to something?”

“No, not this time.” A shot now of firefighters ineffectively fighting the raging blaze; Sam wonders if the thing that caused the tsunami caused this, too. “I think it’s something else.”

Dean pulls his eyes away from the screen. “What?” 

“Gods.”

“Sam, gods don’t have this kind of power anymore.”

“Yeah, I know. But I think at least one has figured out a way to get it back.” And it sounds right, hearing himself say it.

“Yeah?” Dean says, a little bit skeptical and a little bit curious. “How’s that?”

Ben shifts in his sleep, murmurs incoherently. 

Dean glances at him uneasily. “We probably shouldn’t talk about it in front of him.”

Sam nods.

Dean shifts away from Ben gently and eases off the bed, careful not to disturb him. He flicks off the TV, grabs a book from the top of the stack. They head towards the kitchen in silent, mutual agreement. Sam goes for the coffeemaker, dumps out the thick swill Dean has had on the burner all day, puts in a more humane amount of coffee grounds. Dean settles at the table with the compendium, haggard and bleary-eyed in the bright kitchen lights.

“Took me all day, but I found your Devil’s trap.” He opens the compendium to a page marked with a torn off strip of paper towel. “I think I know why the writing seemed so familiar to you.” 

“I hope that was clean when you stuck it in the book.” Sam reaches over Dean’s shoulder and snatches up the paper towel, tosses it in the trash.

“Chill, Samantha. Your book is fine.” Dean holds out a hand. “Let me have the demon killing knife.” 

Sam fishes it out of his jacket pocket and hands it over hilt first. Dean holds it next to the page he marked, and before Sam even sees the knife next to the devil’s trap, he makes the connection.

“Same language?” He feels a little stupid for not realizing earlier.

“Same language.” Dean turns the book and slides it towards Sam. “It’s called a Chaldean Sorcerer’s trap. It fell out of use in the mid-fifteenth century because no one could read the language anymore. But according to the lore, if a demon is trapped inside, it can be controlled by whoever drew the trap, and when it’s exorcised-”

“It returns to the trap instead of to Hell.” Sam pushes the spine flat to better see the diagram; and that’s it, the trap drawn out so carefully in the basement of the house in Muncie.

“Yeah.” Sam can feel Dean’s stare boring into the side of his face. When he looks up, Dean is watching him in annoyance. 

“Since you’ve already figured it all out, why don’t you share it with the rest of the class?”

“It’s just a theory.” A twelve hour drive had given him plenty of time to ponder his evidence, to add up all the information he had gleaned over the past couple of days and come with only one viable theory. Sam’s about ninety-five percent sure he’s right, but there are still enough unanswered questions that he’s not quite ready to commit fully yet.

“That’s one theory more than I got.”

Sam nods, drags a chair out from the table and sits, bone-weary and a little bit heartsick. “Look, Dean, there’s some stuff I have to tell you, and you aren’t going to like it.”

“When do I ever?” He slumps back in his chair and cross his arms. “Just spit it out, Sam.”

Sam starts talking. He tells Dean about the murders, emanating sloppily out from Indianapolis. He tells Dean about the range of ages and the victims’ proclivities towards music or medicine or, in a few instances, psychic abilities and infallible marksmanship. He tells him about finding the picture of Lisa while the Dixons were arguing, and shows him the one Theresa Dixon gave him, Lisa and the thing that wasn’t Henry Dixon watching at her with such hunger. He tells him about the monthly sacrifices and the impromptu trip to the house in Muncie with Artemis, about the devil’s trap and the stack of books next to the splattered mattress from Ben’s dreams. He tells him about the kind of thing Artemis hinted at, something so powerful a goddess was unsure of her ability to defeat it, something that he was fairly certain was the sorcerer in control of that devil’s trap. Something that had, according to Artemis, already devoured twenty-four divine children and, apparently, Poseidon.

Dean draws his own conclusions as Sam talks, assembling the pieces in the same way Sam had, arriving at the same conclusion.

“What are you saying, Sammy? That all those people were Ben’s brothers and sisters?” He gives Sam this watery smile, the one he usually reserves for when he’s trying to hide just how far at the end of his rope he is. “I mean, I know I’ve been around, but there’s no way –“

Dean’s voice catches, and he falls silent. His eyes are wet, and if there had been anyway in the world for Sam to avoid telling him about all of this, he would have done it in an instant. Dean had just gotten to the point where he was willing to admit to his kid’s paternity, and now this.

“Look-“

“No, Sam. Fuck you. Ben is mine.”

“I’m not saying he isn’t.” Sam keeps his voice even, keeps himself patient. “I’m saying he’s not _only_ yours.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means ...” Sam sighs. “Look, do you remember the shape shifters pretending to be the husband to father the children with their wives?”

“You’re saying Ben’s a shape shifter?”

“No.” He knows Dean is being obtuse on purpose, fighting against the truth the only way he can, but it’s frustrating. “I’m saying it’s the same principle. They needed the DNA of the human father to get in with the wives, right?”

“So, something stole my DNA, and Ben-“

“Is yours.”

“Yeah? You’re telling me some supernatural thing stole my DNA to make Ben, but he’s still mine?”

“Does it actually matter if he’s not?”

“No, of course not. It’s just-“

Dean doesn’t finish the thought. He scrubs his hands over his mouth and gets up, turns his back to Sam. Sam can only see the tightness in his shoulders, the balanced fight or flight stance, but it’s enough for Sam to know this is it, the edge of the abyss. This was the place from where Dean takes great leaps of reckless self-sacrifice: making the deal with the crossroads demon for Sam’s life, making a deal with Death to rescue Sam’s soul, whitewashing Lisa and Ben’s memories of him as if he is a nightmare that needs to be forgotten. 

Sam needs to talk him down and fast; no telling what Dean will do in this state.

“Look, Dean. Do you remember the changelings? They only take human children and they took Ben. If Ben hadn’t been human, they wouldn’t have touched him. And if you could actually see the two of you together, you’d see that there’s no way he isn’t your kid.” Sam considers the scene in Georgia – Dean and Ben leaning against the car like identical twins, the similar flicks of their wrists when they sent the bottle caps sailing. “Seriously, man, he’s you at thirteen, just without the shotgun and the surly attitude.”

Dean doesn’t reply right away; silence hangs heavy in the air, only broken by the sound of the coffee pot gurgling and hissing.

“So let’s say that’s true,” Dean says at last, turning. “Let’s say he’s mine, but only because something else took my DNA to make him. What was it? What’s that thing in the picture with Lisa?”

“A god.”

“A god?” Dean rubs his hand over his mouth again. “Okay. I’ll bite. Which one?”

“Apollo.” 

Dean gaze goes unfocused. “Right. And the thing that’s killing the kids and causing tsunamis and unstoppable fires is another god.”

“Yes.” 

“Why?”

“I’m not sure. Souls provide power in heaven and hell, so maybe that’s what it’s after? Artemis called them divine children, so maybe there’s something in their souls.”

“So it’s eating their souls?”

Sam starts to speak, pauses and reconsiders. “Yeah, I guess it must be.”

Panic flashes across his face. “I, um, I gotta go check on Ben.”

Dean turns abruptly, and walks out of the room. Sam thinks they’re out of the woods where reckless behaviors are concerned, but he wouldn’t bet money on it. He gets up and follows, but nearly plows into Dean when he stops abruptly inside his bedroom. Sam can see what’s caught his brother’s attention over his shoulder.

The bed is empty, and Ben is nowhere to be seen.

* * *

Somehow, the picture of Dorian Gray is hanging over the couch in the living room.

The old man is shifting restlessly on the canvas, shoving at the barrier of gilt frame, banging his fists on the glass box encasing him. It’s whining low in its throat like a kicked dog, its peeling oil-paint hair waving surreally as it shifts around and pushes at the boundaries of its prison.

“Come closer, boy. Come and let me out,” it says in a scratchy whisper that echoes in his head. “Just a taste, that’s all I need.”

Ben watches it in disgust. “Do you see this?”

“See what?” Dean says from behind his fingers. He’s been sitting on the couch for a while now, head in his hands. It is starting to worry Ben; he’s not rattling doorknobs or trying to put a putter through the windows anymore, which is nice, but the whole slumped in defeat thing is somehow worse.

“This painting. How did it even get here? Mom isn’t big on decorating, but she would never hang this thing on the wall.” 

“You let it in by responding to it.” Dean’s voice is muffled by his hands. “If you had ignored it as I told you to....”

“Dude, it’s on the living room wall!” Ben gestures emphatically at it. A creepy moving painting suddenly hanging over the TV should have had Dean getting all bossy and overprotective, but he doesn’t even look up. “How am I supposed to ignore it?”

“Why won’t you listen to me, boy?” the painting whines, then slams its fists against the glass and screams, “Let me out, you whelp!”

“Oh, shut up!” Ben shouts back. The old man is really starting to piss him off. Dean is, too, for that matter. “Are you going to do something about this or not, Dean?”

Dean sighs; the couch creaks as he stands. “Yes. All right then. I suppose it’s as good a time as any for an object lesson.” 

He moves in behind Ben, stands just outside of his peripheral vision. “Incubi like this one are easily killed. Just put something sharp through the heart and eye.”

“What are incubi?” Dean never talks to him about monsters, not really, not like this, like he’s teaching him instead of warning him. Ben’s going to ask questions while he can.

“A creature that feeds on sexual energy, like the girl you met in the woods, though as a female, she was technically a succubus.” Dean pauses a moment like he’s mulling it over. “This one is a little different, though. I don’t know what it’s called, but it feeds on youth instead of sex.” 

Ben’s stomach churns at remembering the girl-thing in the woods; the scrapes on his cheek and the split lip had healed already, but he was never going to forget the way she felt, pressed up against him or the hissing clicks of her true voice or the stench when she died. 

“I’m sorry I shouted at you, boy,” the painting says, simpering and apologetic. “I can’t help it though. All that supple flesh and that pretty, pretty light shining out of your chest.” It licks its lips hungrily, its flaky-paint tongue wiggling obscenely around its black-hole mouth. “Just a taste! That’s all I want. One tiny little taste.”

“Gross,” Ben says. 

“Indeed. As infections on the skin of the world usually are.” Dean’s hand flashes briefly in the corner of his eye as he gestures towards the silver object lying on the nest of packing straw at Ben’s feet. “Go ahead and take the quiver. One of the arrows will do nicely.”

Ben picks it up, pulls the straw from between the silver arrows, unwinds the inlaid strap. Scenes are inscribed in the gleaming silver, intricate and delicate, one scene flowing into the next, so meticulously rendered that he can see the tiniest details: the oily scales on a huge snake wrapped around a tree, a shower of arrows piercing its side; the terror on the faces of seven boys and seven girls lying scattered across a glen, arrows in their throats or back or eyes. He can see the fangs of the screaming gorgons inlaid on the shields of the soldiers lying dead on a beach, arrows piercing their armored chests and plague distorting their features. He can see the precise flight of an arrow into the heel of an armored Greek, the sharp beaks and the beady eyes of vultures feasting on the body of a giant staked to the ground in the Underworld; the shining wings of a crow, fluttering up into the sky with an enraged caw; the cracks and fissures in the stones toppling from the walls of a besieged city; the contorted face of a crying baby snatched from a funeral pyre and the burning flesh of its mother shrinking and curling in the flames.

He had seen these scenes in his visions earlier when he had knocked over the crate and spilled the quiver out of its box, horrific scenes of vengeance and pain and death. But inscribed in the quiver they are somehow beautiful, beautiful and magnificent and utterly horrific all at once.

“Is this yours?” Ben asks.

“It used to be. Now it’s yours.” Dean hesitates. “Do you like it?”

“Yes.” Ben grins. He pulls the strap over his head and drops the canister across his back, the silver arrows rattling within. The strap shortens automatically to better fit him. It isn’t the Impala, but it’s definitely a bad ass consolation prize. “It’s awesome. Thanks.”

“You are welcome.” Dean sounds relieved. “Be sure to take care of it. It will be invaluable when you hunt.”

“But I thought you didn’t want me to be a hunter.” Ben turns to look at Dean, but all he sees is Dean’s back as he disappears into the next room.

“I don’t.” Dean’s voice echoes back at Ben. “But sometimes you will have to be.”

Ben hurries after Dean into the narrow room with all the weird artifacts. The painting of the old man is back on the wall where it’s supposed to be. Its face is twisted in rage, and it’s still pounding on the glass case, shifting back and forth between screaming insults and begging pathetically.

Dean is standing a little ways away from it, giving Ben space to work. “Strike it in the eye, first, Ben. Then the heart.”

“But I don’t have a bow.”

“You don’t need one. Not for this, anyway. It’s just a painting.”

“But the glass case-”

“Is easily broken, even with the protective wards. Just break it.”

Ben looks around for something to break it with, but there’s nothing, just all the artifacts in their cases and little else. “With what?”

Dean sighs in irritation again. “Ben, this is a dream. You can break it anyway you like.”

“A dream?” Ben frowns and looks around. The living room from the house in Cicero is still back the way they came, the wall above the TV empty of the painting, now. That definitely hadn’t been the other room when he and Dean were here before.

“Yes. A dream.”

Ben considers that for a minute. “And I can do anything I want, since it’s a dream, right?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?”

“Absolutely.”

Ben nods, looks over his shoulder again. The living room from Cicero is still there, so yeah, this has to be a dream.

“All right, then,” Ben says, cocks his arm back, and lets his fist fly.

There is pain, sharp and bright, and the old man’s mouth twists into a greedy smile as Ben’s fist goes through the glass, thread-thin fissures radiating out from where his knuckles strike. 

Ben pulls his hand back, grinning.

“Show off,” Dean says, and Ben can hear amusement in his voice. And also pride. Ben knows he’s supposed to be mad at him, but he can’t help basking a little.

The thing reaches forward and pushes against the remaining glass with the flat of his palms; it crackles as the pane begins to give. 

“Come. Step back,” Dean says, pulling him back by the shoulder. “You already have glass in your hand. You don’t need it in your face, too.”

Ben glances down, and sure enough, there are three sizable slivers of glass buried the back of his hand, and blood is dripping steadily on the floor. It hurts, but only distantly. 

There a shattering noise, and when he looks up, the old man has pushed the rest of the glass pane out. He’s crawling out of its frame, hands wrapping around the broken glass to heave itself up and out. Paint is falling off it in a rain of black flakes as its two dimensional body fills out, plumping up as it enters the three dimensional world.

“Oh, good boy,” it says in this obscene purr that makes Ben’s skin crawl. “Good, beautiful, tasty boy...” 

Ben takes another step back not in fear, but in disgust. Normally, he’d be too terrified to do anything. The demon, the vampire, the succubus in the woods, the thing in the clinic – he was so afraid, barely functional. But here, in his dream, where he’s armed with silver arrows, and Dean is actually showing him how to use them, how to hunt and fight and protect himself, he feels bold, strong, like power is raging just under the surface of his skin.

He reaches back. The arrow comes into his hands easy and natural, like he’s been doing it his whole life, and the pain in his hand is just white noise in the background of his power rush. He itches to hold a bow. He knows how it would feel in his hand, the tension in the bowstring as he draws it back, the arc of the limbs as they bend; he knows how the arrow would fly, straight and true, knows how it would sound, striking the flesh of his enemy. 

But he doesn’t have a bow, only the silver arrow, glinting in his hand. It will have to do.

Ben fists it tight, holding it like a knife, and stabs it through the eye of the incubus as it heaves its shoulders through the glass.

It screams in agony and falls back into the frame, its three dimensional head and shoulders protruding from the canvas. Pungent, black fluid begins to gush from the socket, running down the canvass in thick, goopy rivulets.

Ben pulls another arrow from the quiver and aims for its heart. The arrow goes in easy, and more of that black fluid gushes out. The thing stiffens for half a heartbeat then slumps, death coming instantly, the black goop continuing its downward flow.

“Like the girl in the woods,” Ben says, turning to Dean, triumphant and grinning. 

Dean is standing behind him, his grin mirroring Ben’s, but his eyes are the wrong color, not green but shiny gold, gleaming like metal.

“Well done, Ben,” Dean says, full of pride and affection. “As always, your aim is impeccable.”

Ben goes cold and takes a step back. 

“You’re not Dean.”

“No, I’m not,” the Not-Dean says, his metal-gold eyes flashing brightly. “I thought you would never notice.”

* * *

They search the Bunker up and down – bathrooms, bedrooms, library, infirmary, even the biology lab upstairs they never use, but no Ben.

“Outside, maybe?” Sam says when he meets up with Dean in the library.

Dean shakes his head. “No. I looked. The door is still locked from the inside.”

“Then where? Unless he found a new hallway we haven’t.” They were always finding new hallways, as if the Bunker were slowly revealing itself to them one room at a time. It’s a little more awareness than Sam strictly prefers in his living spaces, but there’s so much magic warding the building that Sam can’t say he’s surprised. There are no new hallways today, though, which doesn’t necessarily mean Ben hadn’t found one, but it does limit where they can look.

“Maybe. Earlier he found-“ Dean stops, eyes wide. “Son of a bitch. I know where he is.”

“Where?” Sam says, but Dean’s already out of the room.

Sam follows, catches up with him as he heads towards the bathrooms. He’s already checked the bathrooms himself, can’t imagine where else Ben could be hiding down this hallway, but then Dean abruptly turns left and disappears through the wall.

Sam draws up short, heart pounding, and stares at Eisenhower on the blank stretch of wall that his brother had literally just run through. 

“Dean!”

“It’s a hidden door.” Dean’s voice comes with a distant echo, like he’s in a large room. “Just follow me, Sammy!”

Sam is not super thrilled about this, but he trusts his brother. He takes a deep breath to bolster his courage, tucks his head down and steps through. Magic shivers over his skin, and then he’s swallowed up by dim shadows, so very unlike the brightly lit hallways of the rest of the Bunker, dim shadows and looming dark shelves and the sense of great height above him.

Sam doesn’t have any time to be stop and gape, but he pauses long enough to take in the multitude of curse boxes, the shelves that disappear into shadows above him, the hanging bare bulbs that do little to disperse the darkness.

“Department of Mysteries,” Sam mutters, half amazed.

“Sam!” 

Dean’s voice is coming from somewhere to his left. Sam follows the sound down the aisle, takes down the first turn, and finds Dean already on his knees in front of Ben. They are framed by a dark doorway. To the left is a huge hunk of stone with a sword hilt protruding from it, on the right, a tottering stack of crates and one fallen from the top, split open on the floor and spilling out a tangle of packing straw. 

Ben’s face is empty, his pupils drawn into tiny pinpricks, face slack with whatever he sees. Blood is dripping from his hand, a lot of blood, and it is pooling on the floor at his feet. A trail of blood splatter disappears into the dark doorway.

Sam shivers. Something is very wrong here.

“Ben?” Dean already has his flannel shirt off and is wrapping it around Ben’s hand. “Come on, Ben. Wake up.”

“The hell, Dean?”

“Don’t know. See if you can find where he cut his hand.” Dean jerks his head towards the dark doorway. “In there. Switch is on the right.”

Sam steps around them and follows the blood trail into the darkness of next room. He finds the light switch right where Dean said, and the light gleams on a couple dozen glass cases filled with what must be mystical objects. Most line a long table, but a few are mounted on the wall. A painting in a gilt frame draws his eye immediately, an old man is slumped over against the frame, a silver arrow, a real world arrow sticking out of its eye and another out of his chest. Black, viscous goop reminiscent of ectoplasm is dripping down the wall like dirty motor oil from an engine block.

It’s a textbook-perfect incubus kill.

Sam rounds the table, broken glass crunching under his boots as he nears it. Some of the shards are smeared with human blood, probably Ben’s.

“Found it!” he calls to Dean.

“What was it?”

“A display case.” Fascinated, Sam grabs the arrow sticking out of the eye and yanks it loose, watches in disgust as more of the goop wells out of the tear in the canvass, sliding down the painting in a thick, miasmic crawl.

“Which one, Sam?”

“The one with the painting of an old man.” Sam leans in closer to make out the title on the oxidized plaque. _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ , it reads. Seriously?

In the other room, Ben begins to respond.

* * *

When Ben comes to, he’s in the Department of Mysteries room next to Excalibur, and Dean is on his knees in front of him, wrapping his flannel shirt around his hand. His hand hurts. Badly. Without looking, he knows that there are three slivers of glass embedded in between his knuckles, and one in particular that has cut through a pretty important vein, but he’s not too worried. His body is already working to stop the blood flow, and as soon as someone pulls out the shards, it should heal up pretty quick.

“What are we doing here?”

Dean jerks his head up, eyes wide. The phantom wound on his hairline is tricking blood again.

“What are we – Ben, what are you doing here? I told you not to come back in here.”

“But you brought me here.” Ben pauses, reconsiders. “Right?”

“No.”

“Where did you get this?” 

Ben starts at the sound of Sam’s voice, looks over his shoulder. Sam is standing next to the painting of the old man, holding a silver arrow. In the painting, the old man sags motionless against the gold frame, his thick, black blood running down the canvass, pooling at the bottom of the broken glass case, and dripping down the wall. The arrow is covered in the same black goop as the painting.

“Out of the quiver.”

“What quiver?” Dean asks.

Ben is just so confused right now. “The one you gave to me.”

“Ben, I didn’t give you a-“ Dean’s eyes cut to the broken crate and packing straw spilled out on the floor. “You mean the silver quiver that fell out of that crate. What did you do with it?”

Ben looks down. The strap is tight across his chest, the quiver a snug weight between his shoulder blades. 

Ben jerks his hand away from Dean and takes a step back. “Is this real?”

“Yeah, Ben. It’s real.”

Ben isn’t so sure. He cradles his bundled hand against his chest and looks around; everything looks normal, the living room in Cicero is gone, but Sam’s here instead, and how does he tell? 

He studies Dean’s eyes more closely. Green, not gold.

“You look normal,” Ben says dubiously.

Dean runs his hand over his mouth and looks back at Sam. They share one of their sibling looks, and Sam shrugs. 

Dean gets to his feet. “Okay, come on. Let’s get your hand fixed up.”

Ben is firmly steered out of the Department of Mysteries and down the hall to the bathrooms, where Dean unwraps his hand and puts it under the water. Ben hisses when the water hits his hand, watches with dazed detachment as the blood thins out and pinks the water as it washes down the drain.

“I’m going to pull these shards out, Ben,” Dean says holding his hand above the sink and turning it back and forth, examining the shards more closely. Blood is welling out of the cuts again; bright red beads drip into the white ceramic sink. “It’s going to hurt. You ready?”

Ben nods, even though he’s not ready, not really. Dean starts to pull on the first shard, and he’s right. It does hurt. A lot. Quick healing has never meant lack of pain. Tears well in Ben’s eyes, and he resists the urge to yank his hand away, but he stands there, tense and still and biting back his whimpers while Dean pulls the two larger slivers of glass from his hand.

The third doesn’t come out so easily.

“Gonna need tweezers for this,” Dean mutters to himself.

He turns off the water, wraps a towel around Ben’s hand and sits him down on a bench with a row of towel hooks hanging over it. 

“Don’t move,” Dean says, aiming a stern finger at Ben, then disappears into the hallway, calling for Sam to bring tweezers, too.

A floor to ceiling mirror hangs on the wall opposite Ben, and Ben stares at his reflection across the room, not really understanding what he’s seeing at first. The light is as bright as usual, forcing Ben to squint against it, but he can still see his own personal soul-wounds, little bruises all over his body, some small, some large and multicolored, all the painful, emotional hits he had taken in his life, but none that represent real, physical wounds. Nothing there surprises him, but the light he realizes, that bright, gleaming light he’s had to squint against every time he has looked in the mirror for the past several weeks shouldn’t be there. He shouldn’t have to cover up the light shining out of his chest just so he can see himself.

And also, there shouldn’t be _two_ of them.

His own soul, silvery and bright, is lodged in under his heart, its long, creeping tendrils laced through his body, along his nerve endings and blood vessels, wrapping around his spinal cord and coiling up in the soft tissues in his brain – that’s right where it’s supposed to be. But then there’s the _other_ soul, golden and warm, like the sun on a bitterly cold day, encasing Ben’s soul with its gleaming, sharp barbs, digging in and holding tight.

The world sort of recedes from him. Ben feels lightheaded and floaty and numb, like he’s falling away from his own body. It’s disassociation caused by excessive stress, easy-peasy psychology, that, just his way of coping with something too big for him to handle. But he must have made a noise or something, because Dean is suddenly there, all his wounds lit up like a Christmas tree.

“Ben? Ben, what is it?”

“I didn’t know.” His voice seems far away, like it’s coming at him from another room. “I thought it was a dream. He asked me if I would keep it for him, and I said yes. I didn’t know.”

“Ben?” The panic in Dean’s voice kicks up a notch. “What did you say yes to?”

Everything goes black for a minute, like when the cable goes out during a storm, then he’s blinking up at Dean kneeling over him, one hand tucked under Ben’s head as he shouts for Sam.

Dean has so many wounds, all layered on top of one another, bleeding and seeping and aching. How Dean gets through life that damaged is beyond him, and Ben has the itching urge to touch him and make them heal, but he can’t, not these. They’re deep down in his soul, they take time and constant exposure, and Dean won’t give him that. Dean wouldn’t even give him his memories.

“Why wouldn’t you let us fix those?”

Dean starts, looks down. “What?”

“Could have fixed them, if you’d stayed.”

Sam comes barreling into the room, hair flying, several of his own wounds lit up, with a first aid kit in his hand. “What is it? What happened?”

“He passed out.” Dean helps Ben sit up, lets him lean back against him, still woozy. The quiver is pressed between them, but Dean doesn’t seem to notice. “You okay, Ben?”

“I’m okay. It’s just a dissociative episode. Coping mechanism.”

“Going all House on me wasn’t enough?” Dean’s voice has gone thick and raspy again; he’s trying really hard to keep the tremor out and failing. “Gotta go Dr. Phil, too?”

“Sorry,” Ben mumbles.

Sam crouches next to them on the cold tile floor with the first aid kit, unhooks the latch and flips it open. “Here. Let me see your hand.”

Dean supports Ben as Sam fishes out a pair of tweezers, then pries the last, smallest sliver of glass out of his hand. Ben watches him closely as he smears antibacterial cream all over his hand and wraps it in gauze. Sam isn’t clean of scars and physical wounds like Dean. He’s got all those burn wounds on his soul, and that strange glowing light in his arm, and Ben can’t even begin to understand the little flecks of darkness floating in Sam’s blood, but he can do something about the dozen or so physical scars on his body, especially that horseshoe shaped scar on his palm, the one full of unearthly rage and hate.

The urge is just so strong, and Ben just does it, grabs Sam’s hand, digs his thumb into the scar. Sam flinches, startled. 

Dean says, “What the hell, Ben?”

“He doesn’t need this anymore,” Ben replies and squeezes.

Warmth pools in his chest, like steam building up in a pot of boiling water, and then it bursts out of him, erupting outward. There’s a flash of light – that’s a bit of Ben’s soul, that light, coming out of him – and Sam falls back on his ass, eyes wide in surprise. The darkness in his blood is still there, and that glowing white light in his arm and all the other soul-wounds, but the scar on his palm, the little fractures in his ribs and the dozens of other scars and badly healed wounds are gone. His body is good as new.

Ben slumps against Dean, exhausted and ready to go back to sleep again.

“Sammy?” Dean says, and this time the raspy, thick voice is for Sam.

“I’m okay.” Sam turns his hand, stares at his palm. “It’s gone.”

“What’s gone?”

“The scar on my hand.” Sam holds up his hand, palm out. It’s clean and smooth; the only lines on his palm are the ones that should be there according to his DNA.

Dean looks down at Ben. “What did you say yes to?”

“I don’t know,” Ben says, letting his eyes droop closed. “But it was pretty.”

In the dream, he’s thirsty.

His iPod tells him it’s almost two-thirty in the morning. He rolls out of bed, wincing at how cold the floor is. He goes downstairs, skipping the creaky step so Mom won’t wake up, and stops at the thermostat long enough to turn up the heat.

He moves along the hallway, past the laundry room, into the kitchen where he pulls the milk out of the refrigerator and drinks straight from the carton.

When he turns, the man is there.

He’s tall and slender and graying at the temples, his glasses perched askew on the end of his nose. His blue checked shirt and khakis are stained with blood and something else, something that gleams gold in the watery blue light of the microwave clock. He has his hand pressed to his chest like he’s trying to keep something in, and Ben knows he’s hurt even if he’s trying to pretend he isn’t.

“Hello, Ben,” he says, all calm and pleasant, like he isn’t bleeding out all over the kitchen floor.

“Uh, hi.” Ben’s not too worried, because, you know, dream.

“I need your help. Do you think you can help me?”

“Maybe. What kind of help?” 

“I need you to keep something for me, Ben. Not for long, just until I can come back for it.”

“What is it?

“Something very powerful and very important.”

His fingers curl over his abdomen, over the wound, and then he’s digging in, fingers like claws, scooping into his flesh, his insides. His blood gushes out black in the dim light, but there’s gold in there, too, thin little rivulets that sparkle and gleam. It splatters on the floor, begins to pool at his feet. He cries out in agony, and Ben echoes it with his own cry of horrified surprise.

“It’s okay, Ben. I’m okay. See?” He holds out his gold-blood covered hand, and in his palm is a ball of light, a golf ball sized scoop of sunlight casting shimmering light over the dark kitchen. It’s beautiful. Seriously beautiful. Prettier than anything he has ever seen. Ben stares, entranced. Whatever it is, he’ll be happy to keep it safe.

“Yeah, okay. I’ll take it.”

The man smiles, but it’s a rictus of pain, a feral grimace. It worries Ben, but still, you know, dream.

“This will hurt, Ben. I’m sorry.”

And then he lunges towards Ben so fast, he doesn’t have a chance to react. He grabs Ben by the back of the neck with one hand, covers Ben’s mouth with the other, and shoves the glowing light down Ben’s throat.

And Ben’s body begins to burn from the inside out.


	11. Chapter 11

Ben sits up with a gasp.

The lights are off, but the glow-in-the-dark stars on his bedroom ceiling give the room a mild, green glow. Dean is sitting at the end of the bed, head bowed, hands clasped between his knees, sort of glowing himself, his skin golden and warm like the bodies of fireflies or the weird fish that live at the bottom of the ocean.

Except it isn’t Dean. This time, Ben remembers he’s dreaming.

The anger surges back, hard and hot. “Stop looking like Dean.” 

The Not-Dean looks up, fixing him with his gleaming, metallic-gold eyes. “I can’t. I’m at the mercy of your subconscious.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I look like Dean because this is your image of father.”

Another cryptic answer. He is just so tired of not getting straight answers. “And you’re wearing it why?”

Not-Dean tilts its head, and just gives Ben this _look_ , like Ben already knows all the answers and is just being extra dumb about it. But Ben doesn’t have all the answers. Or any, for that matter. All he has is a bunch of questions that no one is answering, and some kind of thing hanging out in his head, looking like Dean and being cryptic about why.

“If you’re trying to tell me that Dean is my dad, I already knew that.” It’s the only thing he can think of, that this thing is giving up the big secret like it’s going to be a surprise.

“No, Ben. I’m trying to tell you that _I_ am.”

Ben feels like someone has punched him in the stomach; he wants to scream at this thing wearing Dean’s face, call it a liar, make it clear that Dean is his dad and that’s how it is. But Ben knows it’s true, knows deep down in his soul that Dean isn’t his dad and never has been. Dean is just some guy his mom met once and happened to show up at his eighth birthday party just in time to save him from the changelings.

Bens slumps, the anger fizzling out into nothing. “So the doctor-thing at the clinic was right? Dean isn’t my dad.”

The Not-Dean sighs in frustration, shakes his head. “No, Ben. Dean is your father. You are as much of a Winchester as he is. Look at your DNA.”

Ben looks down at his hands and sees it, his DNA swimming through his blood and interstitial fluid and the fibers of his muscles and the cells of his bones and skin and fingernails. He can see down into the ladders of double helices, can see the nucleotides and chromosomes and a few other things he doesn’t have names for because human science hasn’t discovered them yet. He knows if he studies them long enough he will know which of his genes came from Dean and which came from Mom, and as he watches thin tendrils of gold light slither in the subatomic spaces between protein sequences, some of it clings to specific genes, genes that should be dormant and nonfunctional but aren’t. 

Those, he realizes, came from the thing sitting at the end of his bed.

“I don’t get it. What am I looking at?” Though he understands what he sees, he doesn’t understand what it means. Maybe he is being extra dumb about all this.

“Every little piece of DNA carries a piece of soul with it,” the Not-Dean says. “That’s how shape shifters and leviathan can take the form and memories of their victims. Your physical DNA came from Dean and Lisa, and the little pieces of their souls that came with it. But the spark of life, that that flash of gold you see slithering between your genes? That’s from me.” The Not-Dean sounds smug. “That’s my contribution.”

“Wait.” Ben takes a second to get the right words together. “Are you saying that I have two dads? Because that’s impossible. Even without the superpowers I know that’s impossible.” 

“Not impossible, Ben. Not for me.”

“And what are you?”

“A god.”

Ben eyes the Not-Dean skeptically. “You’re a god.”

“Yes.”

“Which one?”

“Apollo.”

Ben scoffs. “Yeah, right.”

Not-Dean scowls just like the real one. “You accepted the identities of Artemis and Hermes almost without question, but you scoff at me?”

“Dude, you’re telling me I’m like Percy Jackson or something.”

The not-Dean looks pained; the gods must not like the _Percy Jackson_ books very much. “Not exactly, but I see your point. You don’t believe you’re a demi-god.”

Ben winces. “It sounds stupid when you say it like that.”

“It’s not stupid. You should be honored to be my son.” The Dean-lookalike sitting at the end of his bed, the god _Apollo_ , sounds really hurt. He’s even pouting a little. “I took a prophecy that ensured my death to make you, Ben, and made you so powerful that we haven’t had a child like you in three millennia. You’re my youngest and my strongest child, and I gave everything I had, risked my life interfering with the angels’ breeding program, to make you what you are.”

And now Ben feels sort of bad, which seems just infinitely stupid, all things considered. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. It’s just...” 

He doesn’t really know how to say the rest, so he just shrugs, defeated.

“You want Dean to be your father.” Apollo sounds sad and disappointed, maybe because Ben would choose Dean over him, but honestly, there’s no contest. He’s not going to even pretend there is.

Ben nods. “Yeah. And now look at me.” He fiddles with the edge of his comforter, heart sinking. “I’m something he usually hunts.”

“That’s untrue. I am something he usually hunts. You are his son, and he will claim you, Ben. You have my word.”

“Yeah? He left us and wiped our memories. Doesn’t seem like he’s all that interested in being my dad.”

“Ben, my son, you’ve seen the extent of damage to his soul, but you’re too young understand what you’ve seen. For Dean, that was the ultimate sacrifice. He gave up having you to protect you.”

Ben thinks about the other night in the Impala, Dean saying that he just wanted them to have a normal life, how it wasn’t worth it to put them in danger. “That’s what he said.”

“He was telling you the truth.”

“Well if that’s true, then he’s a total dumbass. He should stop hunting and come home before he gets killed. Sam can even come with him, if he wants.”

Apollo puts a hand on Ben’s ankle and squeezes it affectionately through the comforter. “Give it time, Ben. Dean wants you and your mother more than you can possibly conceive, and you will have your chance at him. I say that as a god and as your father. My oracles are never wrong.”

Ben frowns, confused. “What are oracles?”

A shadow passes over blinds, dark and wing shaped. 

“Prophetesses,” Apollo says as he gets up and crosses to the window. He pulls down a slat of the blinds and peers out into the night. “The wings again.”

The wings, the huge leathery wings that block out the stars and make Ben’s blood run cold. “What are they?”

“You don’t want to know.” The blinds shudder with thin metallic vibrations as he lets the slat go and turns to Ben. “Ben, I’m going to tell you the truth. We’re dying, you and I. I can save you, but you have to let me save you. I’ve seen your dreams and I know what to do, but you have to let me come forward to do it.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Something risky, but we are at the point where we have to take the risk. Will you let me assert some control?”

Ben considers him a moment, the thing, the _god_ standing there by the window and wearing Dean’s clothes and posture and face. “It depends. It sounds like you think mom is still alive. Do you know what happened to her?”

“I don’t.”

“Do you know how I can find out?”

Apollo tilts his head to the side, his eyes going distant for a moment. “Yes. I do, actually.” He refocuses on Ben. “If I show you, will you let me do what has to be done?”

Ben nods without hesitation; his body is dying, he can feel it. Someone has to do something, and between the two people currently inhabiting his body, he’s the one who has no idea how to fix it. “Yeah. But I need to know, first.”

“Very well, then, one last prophetic dream for you.” Apollo reaches out and puts his hand over Ben’s eyes-

Ben is standing outside of the bunker. It is nighttime and bitterly cold. He shivers in his thin hoodie, his breath puffing out in condensed little clouds in front of him. A nearly full moon hangs over him, its light gleaming on the black skin of the Impala. Stars glitter in the sky, and above him wings again, but not the leathery, terrifying wings he has become used to see in his dreams. These wings are feathered, iridescent-white like pearls, glowing gently in the night. Their span is magnificent in their breadth before they are folded behind the back of a man in a trench coat with grim blue eyes.

“Be silent,” he says with a voice like gravel, and Ben opens his eyes.

He’s standing outside of the Bunker. It’s nighttime and bitterly cold. He shivers in his thin hoodie, his breath puffing out in condensed little clouds in front of him. A nearly full moon hangs over him, its light gleaming on the black skin of the Impala.

But no angel. Not yet.

“Castiel,” he says into the quiet. “Can you hear me? I need your help. I think you might know how to find my mom....”

* * *

Castiel had always known the boy would remember.

The first time he had seen the child, he had recognized him as a corrupted vessel, could see the wash of pagan interference in the seams of his soul. No angel would deign to occupy his body unless very, very desperate, as Zachariah had proved when he went through the trouble of resurrecting Adam Mulligan from his scattered ashes rather than convincing Ben to say yes. Acquiring Ben would have been the easier course, but the pagan corruption would have been chafing, and Lucifer was not the only angel with excessive pride.

But the corruption had, despite its distasteful nature, brought its own protections. It had ensured that he had not needed to protect Ben as well as Dean when Michael had been seeking a vessel, but it had also meant that the wall he had erected in the boy’s mind to hide his memories of Dean would not remain unbroken forever. 

He just hadn’t expected the wall to break so soon.

Castiel pauses his Biggerson’s loop in Portland, Oregon, and listens to the boy’s prayers. Lisa is missing, and Ben is pleading for Castiel’s help to find her. He hesitates to do so; it is critical to keep the angel tablet safe, to prevent Heaven or Hell from obtaining it. But he had also left the Braedens defenseless when he removed their memories of Dean, and he is not sure he can have their endangerment on his conscience, not when they have no one to whom they might turn....

On impulse Castiel stands and opens his wings. He can simply scoop Ben up and deposit him within a reasonable distance of Dean, put him out of danger and return to the loop. It will be an easy matter, swiftly done and with minimal risk if he moves quickly; Castiel will not have to interact with Dean or Sam, Dean will act to protect Ben, whether he feels worthy of doing so or not, and the angel table will remain safe.

But when he lands on a dirt road in Kansas and finds Benjamin Braeden leaning against the Impala, his life being slowly leeched away by a pagan _numen_ , he recalls that there is no such thing as simple or easy where the Winchesters are concerned.

“Be silent,” Castiel says, and the boy’s mouth snaps closed, his eyes wide. 

Castiel examines him closely; he is pale and weak, and a silver quiver gleaming with unfamiliar pagan magic is strapped to his back. He leans against the hood of the Impala, not in casual repose but for support to remain upright. The _numen_ is bright and gleaming, almost blinding. It has dug into Ben’s human soul with vicious barbs and is slowly eating away his mortal life force; when it is done consuming Ben, there will be not even be a soul left to ascend to Heaven.

“Wow,” Ben says, oblivious to Castiel’s scrutiny. He is focused on something just over Castiel’s right shoulder, and he raises one hand, reaches out for whatever he sees. “They’re way better than Tilda Swinton’s.”

Castiel is confused at first, unsure of what he’s reaching for or whom Tilda Swinton might be. The only thing to his right is his wing, but Ben can’t possibly be reaching for his wing; humans cannot see angel wings as anything other as shadows or charred soot on the ground, or in the case of Raphael’s showmanship, the occasional burst of lightening. Their wings exist on another plane entirely, but Ben exists at a point of confluence between human and divine, and his hand _is_ steadily moving towards the tips of Castiel’s primaries-

Castiel jerks his wing back, startled. "You can see my wings.”

It poses several interesting questions about the perception of such humans, none of which Castiel has time to ponder.

Ben blinks and snatches his hand back, startled. “Oh, uh, sorry. I didn’t mean to – That was rude, wasn’t it?” He drops his eyes, suddenly shy, a blush bringing color to his unnaturally pale face. “It’s just all the other supernatural stuff has been so ugly, but your wings, they’re, uh... transcendent." 

Castiel is flattered. “Thank you,” he says with his own measure of unbecoming pride, though now is not the time to preen over compliments. “Ben, do you know that there is a pagan _numen_ leeching your soul?"

Ben nods grimly. "I know. Can you take it out?"

Castiel ponders the possibilities for a moment, considers how tightly the _numen_ clings to Ben’s soul. An immediate solution does not present itself. "No. It is too intertwined with your soul. If I remove it now, it will kill you. It requires further study."

Ben nods, glancing away. “That’s okay. We’ve got a plan, and that’s not why I called you anyway.”

“Why, then?”

“My mom. She’s missing. I was wondering if you could find her, before, you know.” Ben makes an offhand gesture that Castiel understands as a nonverbal reference to his probable death.

“I do not know. What happened to her?”

“I don’t know.” Ben drops his head in grief and pain, his resemblance to Dean apparent in every infinitesimal movement. How many times had he seen this posture in Dean? How many times had he seen that same sadness etched into the lines of Dean’s face? The pagan being responsible for his creation had been quite conscientious. “She just didn’t come home from work one night.” 

Ben describes her disappearance, the time and circumstances, and the absence of evidence of human or supernatural interference. Castiel considers it a moment. He could search the earth, but that might draw the attention of his brothers and sisters. It might be easier to travel back in time and observe her disappearance at the moment it happened; a few weeks back will not be too far to travel and would certainly draw less attention.

"Go back inside, Ben,” Castiel says not without concern. “You are weak and the cold will adversely affect you.”

The boy’s face is full of hesitant hope. "You'll look for her, then?"

"Yes.”

Ben’s shoulders slump in relief. "Thank you."

"You are welcome. But, please do not tell Sam or Dean that you spoke with me.”

Ben eyes him suspiciously. “Why not?”

“It is a long story.”

Ben rolls his eyes, and Castiel sees a great deal of Dean in that action, too. “Okay, dude. Whatever you want. Just find my mom. I don’t know how long, well, you know.” Ben gestures offhandedly again.

Castiel finds himself with a grim respect for Ben’s fearlessness in the face of his mortality. “I will do my best.”

He extends his wings, intending to leap into the time stream, when Ben shouts, “Wait, Castiel?”

“Yes?”

“Did you know you have a giant hunk of rock lodged in your body?”

“Yes, I do,” he replies and lets himself fall back through time.

* * *

“An angel, young sir? You do attract the most interesting things.”

Ben starts at the voice, coming right on the heels of the feathers and bright light of Castiel’s unbelievably cool departure. He whips around so fast he’s nearly swamped by dizziness, stumbles stupidly for a minute, and sort of falls back against the Impala. It keeps him upright, but it’s also embarrassing.

Hermes is blocking his path back into the Bunker. He’s still decked out like a bus station attendant, but there’s a black smudge on one cheek, dirt, maybe, or soot, and his name tag has been ripped off, leaving a large tear in his vest.

“You,” Ben says like he’s the stupidest character in a horror movie, and that’s sort of what he feels like right now. It was monumentally stupid to come outside by himself, even if he was asleep when he did it. 

Hermes gives one short, sharp nod. “Me.” He eyes the trees, the Impala, glances behind his shoulder at the Bunker itself with a grimace. “I see you’ve reached your destination. Was it everything you hoped?”

Ben backs away slowly, keeping one hand on the Impala for support. “Artemis told me I shouldn’t talk to you.”

Hermes matches him step for step, moving away from the Bunker but keeping himself firmly in front of it. “Artemis, hmm? Maybe you shouldn’t have been talking to her. Have you ever considered that?”

“Actually, yes.” The Impala’s hood is cold under his hand, but that’s okay, because she’s keeping him upright, helping him to be brave. “But she’s the one who actually took me to Dean, and you just told me to use the dreams. Which made me sick, by the way.”

Hermes shrugs. “I thought that might happen, but his _numen_ wasn’t quite ripe yet when we last spoke. He’s woken, hasn’t he?” He taps his own chest with two fingers. “Apollo? He’s looking quite a bit healthier since you’ve been using the prescience.” 

Ben tries to look as innocent as possible. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’re a terrible liar, Ben.” Hermes shakes his head sadly. “Which is unfortunate, since you’re also a bit tricksy. There’s nothing worse than a trickster with the inability to lie. ”

“I’m not lying.” 

Hermes rolls his eyes. “Oh, young sir. Do stop. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

Ben swallows thickly. His mouth is so dry. “Look, I don’t know what you want-“

“Isn’t it obvious?” Hermes leans in like he’s sharing a secret. “I want the _numen_ , and I want the divinity in your soul.”

Ben pauses, confused. “For what?”

“Well, dinner, of course.”

Time seems to hang for a handful of heartbeats, like the hourglass on a computer screen. Ben’s breath gets caught in his chest. There’s the muffled stillness of the cold and the pounding of his pulse in his ears. There’s a vicious shiver that crawls over his body. And there’s Hermes between him and the Bunker, mild mannered and ready to eat his soul.

Hermes raises one eyebrow with calm expectancy. “Well?” 

Ben bolts, not down the road like a sane person would, but towards the Bunker, towards Hermes. He’s the blonde in the horror movie who runs up the stairs when she should be running out the door, but inside is the only safe place, and if he can get through the door, if he can get past Hermes and make the six foot jump into the stairwell, if he can manage not to hobble himself – 

He doesn’t manage to do any of those things. Something grabs him before he can make the leap, something that hauls him up into the air, takes him off of his feet. His stomach plummets like he’s in a descending elevator, and he can see the stars spinning wildly above him, wheeling over his head. He’s flying, sailing through the air, and then he hits the trunk of the Impala, hard. His lungs seize, his head spins, and Hermes is leaning over him, pinning him down with his will. 

His eyes flash gold, flinty and cold. “Admirable try, young sir. Now be still. It’s time to take this out.” Hermes places his hand over Ben’s chest, right where his soul is twined with the other. “If you don’t move, I promise it will hurt less.”

Hermes’s fingers dig in slowly, relentlessly into his flesh; Ben feels the wiggle of his fingers just before agony consumes him.

Ben begins to scream.

The next few weeks are hard.

Like, really hard. Hard like sleeping on the ground and scrounging for food hard. Like cleaning up best he can in McDonald’s restrooms and avoiding cops, making himself scarce when he sees someone looking too closely at him. That kind of hard. The kind of hard that TV always makes pretty scary until you have to live it and you find out it’s even worse.

The dreams lead him first to an old lady who smells of really strong flowery perfume and gives him a ride from Charlotte to Orangeburg, South Carolina, a cross swinging from her rearview mirror as she talks about Jesus the entire way. He finds the ten dollar bill in the gutter in front of the same convenience store where he meets the VW van full of potheads. They give him a ride down I-95 to a rest stop just outside of Jacksonville, feeding him soy chips and vegan cookies the entire way. A food festival in St Augustine is where he finds the hot blonde handing out free sandwiches from a local sandwich shop, and another five dollar bill he hadn’t even dreamt about.

But those are the few high points. Sometimes the dreams show him a half eaten sub thrown in a trashcan that he just barely manages to choke down or the bed of a pickup truck of an oblivious construction worker where he hides in from St. Augustine to some beachside town near Daytona. He swallows back his fear and the sick twist of guilt when the dreams show him a four dollar tip left on an outside café table, and he steals it, just walks by, casual like, and picks it up. He sleeps fitfully under the bleachers of a high school football field, shivering all night beneath the Colts blanket, and he fishes stale, three day old bagels out of a dumpster behind a Starbucks.

He never starves, and he’s never really in danger, but it’s not easy or soft or fun. He’s always just this side of hungry, and even though the dreams lead him into Florida, it’s still cold enough in March that when you sleep hidden in bushes in parks or behind abandoned buildings, you’re never really warm. But he muddles on and on, and the memory of living in a house with a warm bed and a mother who nags him about not doing the dishes seems like a wonderful fantasy of someone else’s life. 

He follows every dream, good or bad, because he doesn’t know what else to do. So many times he thinks about picking up a pay phone and calling Aunt Sarah, but then he remembers the threat of the demon and Bill’s dead body, and he can’t bring himself to endanger them again. But most of all, he keeps on keeping on because the dreams always and without fail, between the spill of red and gold paint over his hands and the leathery black wings rising into the night sky, promise him that moment when Dean looks up and sees him, raises his hand and beckons him over.

Then he starts getting sick.

He’s never been sick before, not a single sniffle or stomach ache or rash, can’t even imagine what it feels like. Sick has always been something that happens to other people, but one morning he wakes up with a scratchy throat, the first ever, and before the end of the day, his nose is running, and he’s starting to cough. It’s horrible and gross, little explosions of breathlessness that shove their way out of his chest, but he can deal, has to deal. People do it all the time. How hard can it be?

But the next morning, when he is jerked awake by the onslaught of a coughing fit, it’s worse, far worse than he could have ever imagined. He hauls himself up onto one elbow and coughs and coughs and coughs, miserable wet heaves exploding repeatedly from his chest, dragging slimy greenish mucus out of his lungs. It’s disgusting and painful; his throat feels like it has been scraped raw, and his chest and back ache dully. His nose is running freely, and every glob of mucus he guiltily spits out next to the drop cloth he is using for bedding feels like a slimy, fat oyster clawing its way out of his throat.

More than one mouthful of spit and slithering goo ends up on the concrete floor before he gets it under control, takes back his ability to breath. He carefully leans back against the plywood wall of the half-built house he had slept in the night before, shivering in the morning chill and wishing he had a box of tissues at hand. His face is wet with tears and snot, and it feels like someone has punched him in the chest as hard as they could. He wipes his nose on a handful of fast food napkins he had been toting around with him in his backpack, then spends a few minutes just breathing, enjoying the feeling of air going in and out of his lungs, even if there’s a funny little whistling noise in his chest when he inhales. 

Eventually he notices the slam of hammers in the distance, the thunking churn of some kind of machine, and the construction workers calling out to one another. It must be later in the morning than he had meant to sleep, but he feels a listless sort of disinterest in that, like if he gets caught, so what? It doesn’t seem worth worrying about, and honestly, he’s more concerned about what they’d think of the splatters of mucus he’s left on the floor than whether they’d be mad that he’s been sleeping in a partially built two story.

But getting caught and possibly dragged off to a foster home is not a good idea, so he gets himself to his feet. He folds the Colts blanket and shoves it back into his backpack, uses what’s left of his bottle of water to brush his teeth, chokes down two handfuls of the peanuts he guiltily swiped from a convenience store while the clerk was distracted. Then it all goes back into his backpack, and his backpack goes over his shoulder. He trudges onward, his whole body weak and wobbly, leaving the shelter of the semi-finished house and cutting across what will one day be several well-manicured back yards. 

Ben makes it out of the subdivision without getting caught. He plods along the side of road for a long time, shivering when blasts of cold air slap against him as the occasional car flies past. The sun keeps playing hide and seek behind the fast moving clouds, and eventually it disappears behind a bank of dark clouds and stays. He wishes it back as soon as possible; he’s cold, and walking isn’t doing what it should to warm him up. He feels chilled down to his very bones, his joints achy with cold, and deep down inside he’s really starting to consider making that phone call to Aunt Sarah.

Eventually he comes upon a four lane road lined on each side by tall pine trees and strange looking bushes that resemble the tops of palm trees. He follows it for a while until his bladder starts making demands, then just steps into the trees because his mom isn’t there to fuss at him for his lack of manners, as much as he wishes she were, and just, why not?

It’s colder in the shade, but quiet and kind of nice, sort of muffed from the world. His feet crunch over browned pine needles and dead foliage. The pine trees whisper above him, swaying in the wind. Some crows in the treetops call back and forth at one another.

Eventually, he loses sight of the road.

He stops, does his business against a tree, not quite feeling the level of freedom about peeing in the woods as he thought he would. He has half a mind to go further in and find a spot to curl up and sleep, away from the roads and the people and the threat of everything, but when he turns, there’s a _thing_ standing there.

Ben freezes, and his heart tries to climb up into his throat.

It looks human, like a college girl on Spring Break with her boobs spilling out of a red and white striped bikini top, white short shorts, and long blonde hair tangled by the wind. But it’s way too cold today for what’s she’s wearing, even if the seaside Florida towns are already full of Spring Breakers, and far enough away from the beach to make it a little strange that she’s hiking around in the woods half dressed. Besides, Ben can see her real face, her human face stretched over it like the world’s worst Halloween mask, skin the color of dead fish, swirling red pits for eyes, and a hollow cave-like hole that must be its mouth. 

“Hi, sweetie,” she says, her voice girlish and saccharine sweet, but underneath is the real voice, all hisses and clicks, like a pit of angry snakes. “I’ve been following your scent all day. You smell fantastic. And the way you shine...” 

She takes a couple steps into his space, hips swinging, her bottom lip caught coyly between her teeth. Ben knows he should run, but can’t quite seem to get his body to listen to his brain and move, because as far as he can tell, his only reaction to facing a monster is to become paralyzed by terror.

It’s embarrassing and cowardly, and he hates himself for it.

“I’ve never seen a human glow like you before.” She rests her slender hand on his chest, right over his heart, her pretend-girl skin stretching over her claws like a glove. “What are you hiding here?”

As soon as it touches him, as soon as Ben feels the burn of its slimy, cold unnaturalness even through two t-shirts and his hoodie, his paralysis breaks. He dodges to the left and bolts, like an animal with a predator on its haunches, heart fluttering with terror. He only gets about three feet before she’s hauling him back by his backpack and slamming him face first into the nearest tree, his chest clenching as the wind is knocked out of him. The bark scrapes harsh and deep along his cheek, and he can taste his own coppery-sweet blood blooming from a split lip. 

She’s curls her fingers into his hair, grabs tight, and holds him there.

“Calm down, baby.” The human mouth smiles, all sly and flirty, but underneath, the other mouth is opening and closing with a desperate tremble that makes Ben’s stomach roil. “I’ll make it good.”

She leans forward, that empty cavern mouth coming closer and closer, her pretend girl body pressed up along his side. And God, he doesn’t get what his body is doing, because even though he can see what she really is, knows with a sick, skin-crawling certainty that she wants to eat him as surely as the vampire in the bathroom had, she’s warm and smells good, like girly shampoo and strawberry lip gloss, and his body seems to think that she’s a real girl. It has never been quite so close to one of those before, not like this, and is reacting in the expected way, much to Ben’s deep, horrified disgust.

He clenches his eyes shut because he just can’t look, can’t deal with his body’s reaction or that gaping black mouth, can’t deal with dying, not like this-

There’s an abrupt yelp, like a dog getting kicked, and the thing’s pretend-warmth is gone, his body is free. Dizzy and light headed, Ben stumbles backwards in surprise, trips over an upraised root, and ends up on his butt.

A woman is just suddenly there between them, long glossy hair and an awesome but sort of ridiculous Catwoman look, dragging the girl-thing away by her hair. The girl-thing is howling, a piercing, enraged wail, twisting her body unnaturally, snarling and growling as she tries to swipe the woman with her claws. The woman holds her effortlessly with one hand, calm and steady, even as the girl-thing is thrashing around in her grip. In her other hand is a silver knife, long and wickedly sharp.

The woman turns her attention to him, gives him a quick once over. 

“Are you all right, Ben?” 

Ben stares at her, gaping stupidly. She seems familiar, like really familiar, and that’s the only reason why Ben’s not up and running immediately.

“Ben?” she says, whip sharp when he doesn’t answer.

“Yeah.” Ben nods. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Good,” she says and slams the silver knife through the girl thing’s eye. 

There’s a meaty squelch, and the girl thing goes limp, her screeches dying into distant echoes. The woman pulls the knife out with a wet sucking sound and shoves it up under the girl-thing’s ribcage. The pretend skin immediately starts melting away like the faces of the Nazis in _The Lost Ark_ with the worst, most rancid smell Ben has ever encountered, like rotting meat and spoiled milk and backed up sewage all at once. 

Ben presses his sleeve over his mouth and nose, and turns his face away, trying to block out the smell. His eyes water and his stomach heaves violently. He might throw up. He’s never thrown up before, but he thinks this must be what it feels like right before.

There is a thud as the woman drops her, and then there’s a hand on his arm, hauling him up, pulling him away from the pool of stench and rot that the girl-thing is rapidly becoming. 

“What are you doing here, Ben?” He stumbles along as she drags him behind her, still gagging on the reek of the girl-thing, tripping over roots and mounds of dead forest debris. “How did you even get so far south on your own? If you hadn’t wandered into the woods, I would have never found you. And where did you get his _numen_? ”

He has no idea what she’s talking about or why she’s talking to him like she knows him, sounding a lot like his mom when she lays into him for climbing up on the roof or coming in after curfew.

Ben stops and jerks his arm away from her. “Let go of me.” 

He retreats a few steps, puts some distance between them. 

The woman raises her hands in a way that is probably intended to be reassuring, but mostly comes off impatient. “Be calm, Ben. I won’t hurt you. I’m here to help.”

“Yeah. I’ve heard that one before.” Ben wipes at his cheek with the sleeve of his hoodie. It comes away smeared with a dark wet spot. “Who are you?”

“Artemis.”

“Another god? Great.” It’s like he’s a supernatural magnet or something. “What do you want in exchange for _your_ help?”

Her eyes go hard, her fists curl; she seems larger, taller, like she has expanded past all of his senses. He sees her true visage briefly: bright white tunic, leather hunting boots, bow and quiver over her shoulder, dagger at her waist. 

Ben shrinks away, terrified.

“What other god, Ben?” Her anger washes against his skin, searing hot. “Who else have you spoken with?”

“Hermes.”

All that towering rage suddenly winks out of existence, and she’s just some chick in a lot of leather, lecturing him like she’s his mom. “Are you sure?”

“Well, that’s who he said he was. And I could sort of see him.” Ben gestures vaguely at his head. “You know, the winged hat and the shoes and stuff. He saved me from a vampire.” 

She looks scared, utterly and completely terrified. “That’s not possible.”

Ben shrugs. “Maybe not. But that’s who he said he was, and he definitely looked like Hermes.”

She takes a step towards him, not exactly threatening, but still kind of intimidating. “What did you sacrifice to him?”

Ben takes two steps back, heart fluttering jackrabbit quick in his chest. She makes him feel like he’s in so much trouble, but more in a getting grounded kind of way than a dying horribly in the woods kind of way. 

“Ham and honey. Some wine.”

She eyes him like his mom does when she suspects him of lying. “No blood?”

Ben shakes his head. “No. I wouldn’t do that.”

“What did you ask from him?”

“Help with traveling. He told me how to use the dreams I’ve been having about the future.”

She closes her eyes for a second, lips pursed, like she’s in pain. “I’m so sorry this has happened to you, Ben. I will fix this.”

“How? And in exchange for what?” Ben knows it was dumb to take unsolicited help from a Greek god in a bus station bathroom, but he’s at that desperate place again, and bad ideas are starting to sound pretty good.

“In exchange for nothing,” she says and takes his arm again.

The next thing he knows, the woods are gone and they’re standing behind some building with cardboard boxes stacked next to the back door and an interstate roaring in the distance.

“Did you just teleport us?” Ben asks, terror and amazement warring within him. On the one hand, _teleportation_ , but on the other, come on, _teleportation_.

“Yes.” She looks off into the distance, brow furrowed like she’s concentrating hard on something. “Dean and Sam Winchester will be stopping here momentarily.”

Ben’s heartbeat kicks up a few notches. “Dean and Sam? They’re stopping here? Are you sure?”

“Oh, I assure you, they’re stopping. They can’t help but to stop.” She pauses, tilts her head as if listening to something far off. “Don’t you hear it?”

“Hear what?” All he can hear is the wind and the roar of the interstate, and the rumble of some large vehicle coming closer. 

Wait. He knows that rumble.

Ben sucks in a sharp breath, and there’s this flood of joy and relief, this overwhelming sense of _finally_. “That’s the Impala.”

She smiles, bright and sort of pleased, like she’s genuinely glad to see Ben so excited. “Yes, it is.”

Ben doesn’t hesitate. He starts off around the building at an adrenaline fueled run then remembers his manners at the very last moment. She saved him from the girl-thing, brought him to Dean without any need for payment, no deal making or threats, and he’s grateful. He’s really, really grateful. He pauses long enough to turn around, still moving but backwards now, and gives Artemis his very best smile, all bright eyes and dimples, the kind that makes his mother roll her eyes and shake her head.

“Thanks,” he says, breathless and excited, then turns around and goes to Dean.


	12. Chapter 12

The first tug nearly takes him off his feet.

Surprise keeps Sam from reacting immediately; he stumbles sideways as his body starts to move of its own volition, but he recovers quickly, plants his feet and holds firm. The sharp, tugging sensation persists; it’s as if someone has slipped a hook under his sternum and is reeling him slowly and inexorably across the room. 

The urge to give in is strong.

“Sam?” 

He turns. Dean has come up from the bedrooms. He’s got a white knuckled grip on the doorjamb with one hand, while the other presses over his chest in the exact spot Sam can feel the tug.

“You feeling it too?” Dean asks.

“Yeah.”

“What the hell is it?” 

Sam shakes his head. “Don’t know.” 

The tug comes again. He takes a few steps forward before he takes control again, forces himself to be still. As an extra measure of precaution, he gets a grip on the lip of the table with both hands. 

“Outside?” Dean says, from the other side of the room, where he is leaning his forehead against a pillar, chest heaving.

Sam nods; he has the burning, compulsive urge to go outside.

Another tug. Sam fights, but this time, it takes him longer to get control. He’s got one foot on the bottom step before he stops himself from climbing the staircase. He’s breathing hard, sweating like he’s been out on a run. Dean is further up the stairs, both hands wrapped around the wrought iron railing to hold himself still, arms visibly straining and fists bleeding white at the knuckles. 

The next tug is deep and hard. He can’t fight it this time. He’s moving up the stairs, pushing past Dean, who seems to be having more success than him.

Sam gets one hand on the door knob, yanks open the inner door-

Screams wash over him.

The outer door is slightly ajar, which is not the way he had left it when he came in earlier, and the screams come ricocheting through the metal antechamber, a ululation of agony and terror.

It’s Ben.

No unexpected tug is needed to get him moving, he’s through the door and up the stairs, the pull of the compulsion falling away in his compliancy. He can hear his brother’s tread hot on his heels, and when Dean sees Ben’s laid out across the hood of the Impala, light spilling from his chest, his inarticulate cry of anger and fear is right in Sam’s ear.

Something in the shape of a man is leaning over Ben, its hand buried in his chest, digging out his soul. It’s wearing a red vest and black slacks like a bellboy or a movie theater usher, has a neatly trimmed beard. Its mouth is twisted into a satisfied smirk.

“Ben!” Dean bellows, and the thing jerks its head up, eyes flashing metal-gold.

“Stop,” it says, and whips its hand out of Ben. The light coming out of Ben’s chest goes dark, and Sam and Dean come to an abrupt stop, their bodies gripped and held by the invisible force of a monster’s will.

Beside him, Dean is panting hard. “You son of a bitch,” he says in a raspy growl, “you let him-“

The high pitched whistle of a projectile interrupts Dean’s threat, and the quick shick-thunk of a silver arrow piercing the thing’s hand. It howls, jerks away from Ben, gold blood dripping from the wound. 

Another high pitched whistle, a louder, solid thunk as a second arrow strikes him in the shoulder.

It screams out something in what Sam thinks is ancient Greek, whirling on the dark figure who had suddenly appeared behind him, bow drawn, arrow nocked.

Artemis.

“Watch how you address me, brother,” she says and lets another arrow fly. 

The arrow strikes him in the side, and he stumbles away from Ben at the force of it. The unnatural force of its will falls from Sam and Dean, and Dean rushes forward immediately, scoops Ben up. He doesn’t slow, just goes with his forward momentum and heads around the other side of the car with Ben, drops into the dirt next to the trunk. Sam follows, thinking they should have gone back to the Bunker, but Dean was working off of his momentum, and what’s done is done. 

Sam drops down next to Dean.

“Shit, Sammy. Shit.” Deans is cradling the back of Ben’s head with one hand and tugging up his shirt with the other. There’s no wound to show that a hand had just been in his chest, though there is a bruise, huge and dark. Sam winces in sympathy; he hadn’t actually been there when Castiel had shoved his fist in into his soulless counterpart, looking for his soul, nor had he been aware when Death shoved it back in, but he still has the memory of the pain, one of the few things his soulless self had ever actually felt.

“Fucker,” Dean says. “Think he got it out?”

Sam puts two fingers to Ben’s pulse; it thumps on steadily under his skin, so he isn’t dead. Ben’s head rolls loosely against Dean’s shoulder, mouth slightly open. “I don’t think so. I think we interrupted him early enough.”

“Got your keys?”

Sam nods. He digs them out of his front pocket, gets the trunk open and props open the hidden compartment. He sorts through the weapons and tries to keep out of sight while the gods have their little family dispute on the other side of the Impala.

“I hear you killed Father, Artemis,” the unidentified god is saying, his tone is sly and amused, the sound of one sibling taunting another. 

“I didn’t kill him. I put him down.” Artemis’s voice is thick with pain. “Please don’t make me do the same to you.”

“That’s the dude.” Dean whispers. He’s peering around the edge of the car as he holds Ben close. 

“What dude?” Sam asks, distracted as he sorts through the weapons. They haven’t got shit to help them with a god; it usually takes a specially made weapon of some kind to put them down, something that is unique to each. He had no idea which god the movie usher is, let alone what they would need to kill him. All they’ve got is their usual assortment of guns, a few knives, a crowbar, a gallon of holy water, and a compound bow they used to hunt a selkie a couple weeks back. There’s not even an angel blade; they’re both in the Bunker. 

“The one from that hotel in Muncie. Remember, with Kali and Gabriel? I mean, he’s got the evil Spock beard going on now, but it’s him. The creepy dude at the reception desk.”

Sam pauses, considers the heap of coincidences involved with this case, and peers around the side of the hood. 

“You think you can take me, Artemis? I’m nearly at full capacity. Look.” The movie usher god thrusts his hand towards her, golden fluid dripping down his wounded hand. Dean’s right. It is the god who was playing front desk clerk in the hotel in Muncie – Mercury, if Sam remembers correctly. “Do you see? I’m bleeding ichor again. When was the last time you bled like this? The tenth century? Maybe the eleventh?”

Artemis looks devastated, but her aim is true, her arms steady as she keeps her brother at a distance with her bow. “So, it’s true then. You’re using Titan magic.”

“Well, there’s little else left.” Mercury pulls the arrow out of his hand, tosses it negligently on the ground. “No ambrosia, no nectar, no blood sacrifices or proper worship. This is the only way to regain our former power.”

“But you’re destroying our family. The children, Poseidon-“

“And Triton and Amphitrite. Thetis and Nereus. Even old Oceanus came for the fight.” He pulls out the arrow in his side with a grunt, tosses it after the first one. “It wasn’t easy, but eventually, I took them all.”

“And Chicago? Was that you?”

“Kali thought she was a match.” He twists awkwardly, but manages to get his hand around the arrow in his shoulder and pulls it out with another grunt. “If you’ve ever wondered how the other pantheons taste, I’d say a little spicier than I prefer, but quite palatable.”

Artemis frowns. “That’s in poor taste.”

“Oh, sister, you made a joke,” Mercury says, the corner of his mouth quirking, gold-flashing eyes gleaming with amusement. “It only took you a few thousand years, but nevertheless, a joke!”

The expression on Artemis’s face is one of devastation and pain and deep sadness. “Look at you. You’ve gone mad.”

He shrugs, unconcerned. “It happens to us all, eventually. Remember Hera and the Salem Witch Trials? And do I need to mention what Dionysus has been up to lately? I mean, let’s be honest. What I’m doing pales in comparison, really.”

“I don’t understand.” She is just shy of pleading. “Why didn’t you just go with Mercury?”

He rolls his shoulder with a grimace of pain. “Go where? Do you know where we go when we die? Nowhere! I spent millennia shepherding human souls to the underworld, but not once, not once did I take a dead god. We dissipate. We become nothing. I’m a god, Artemis. I refuse to become nothing. ”

Sam drops back down, turns to Dean. “You’re right. That’s Mercury.”

“I thought Lucifer killed him.”

“I guess he didn’t do it right.” Sam turns back to the trunk, shakes his head and pulls out the shotgun for lack of any other option. “We’ve got nothing useful here.”

“We gotta get back in the bunker, it’s the only way we’ll-“

There’s an inarticulate cry of pain.

Both he and Dean share a look of panic and peer around the car. Somehow the not-quite-dead Mercury has disarmed Artemis, and has her down on her knees. There’s some kind of huge curved knife, or maybe it’s a short sword, protruding from her shoulder, and he has his hand buried in her chest, the whole world lit up with the golden glow of light spilling around his hand.

Artemis’s eyes are wide, mouth open in a silent scream.

“We’ve got to go, now, Dean. While he’s-”

Ben’s body suddenly jerks upright. “No,” he says, and lands one elbow in Dean’s solar plexus.

Dean lets go of him with a grunt that’s half pain, half surprise. Ben all but flows to his feet, pivots around. His eyes are a shimmering metal-gold like Mercury’s, and something that is not Ben is looking out at them, something old and angry and powerful.

“He will not have Artemis,” it says, and reaches past Sam to snag the compound bow out of the trunk.

Ben moves fast, too fast for Sam to get his hands on him, and then he’s around the car, reaching back over his shoulder as he goes, pulling a silver arrow out of a quiver that shimmers into existence, strapped across Ben’s back.

“Ben!” Dean lunges after him but the thing riding Ben flicks a hand without looking back, sends him flying. He lands on top of Sam, throwing them both back into the dirt. 

The impact is hard enough to knock the breath out of Sam, and he’s left gasping under the hundred and ninety pounds of big brother trying to get back on his feet. They fumble around stupidly for a minute, trying to untangle their limbs, and when they manage to get themselves under control, to get up and around the car, the first arrow is already whistling through the air, striking Mercury in the shoulder. 

Mercury cries out and stumbles back, jerking his hand out of his sister; the light shining from Artemis’s goes dark as she slumps forward, curling in on herself. Gold ichor gushes from the arrow wound, soaking Mercury’s red vest and white shirt sleeves, and he turns his metal-gold eyes on Ben, fury sliding over his face like clouds across the sun.

Dean starts forward, ready to throw himself into the fray, to grab Ben out of the line of fire or die trying, but Sam flings an arm around his neck, hauls him back.

“Sam, let go.” Dean tries to heave himself away. 

“No, man. Wait.” Sam holds tight, puts his extra thirty pounds and four inches into keeping his brother right where he is. It’s only a guess, but he’s pretty sure that whatever is possessing Ben has been leeching power from him for quite a while now, and jumping in between it and Mercury is only going to get them killed. Ben’s going to be okay. He’s not sure how he knows that, but he does. “Look at how Mercury is bleeding. Whatever is riding Ben is way stronger than Artemis.”

It seems to work. Dean stills, stops trying to wrench himself away, but he’s strung tight like a livewire in Sam’s grasp. Sam keeps his arm around him, just in case. 

“Brother,” Mercury says with a smile that would curdle milk. His vest is completely soaked with ichor now, gleaming gold in the bright moonlight. “I knew you were awake in there. Nice of you to join us.”

The thing in Ben doesn’t reply, just withdraws another arrow and nocks it, sends it arcing into Mercury’s chest. 

Mercury stumbles back again, gasping in pain. More ichor gushes from his chest. “Really? This is how we’re going to do this?”

“You swore that you would never steal from me again,” the thing in Ben says, voice icy and flat. “You even took an oath. There is no other way to do this.”

A third arrow, in Mercury’s thigh. He goes down on one knee with a cry of pain, and Dean relaxes subtly in Sam’s grasp.

“You swore on the River Styx, Hermes.” Another arrow into his chest.

Mercury hunches over, one hand wrapped around one of the arrow shafts in his chest. “Yes, well, you’ll get no justice there. There’s no River Styx anymore, just a tepid stream running through Purgatory.”

“I am not interested in justice.” Two more arrows, drawn and nocked and shot faster than Sam’s eyes can follow also strike Hermes in the chest. “Only vengeance.”

“Brother,” Hermes chest is heaving with effort. He holds up his injured hand, still dripping ichor. “Have mercy.”

“Why?” Ben’s movements are fluid as he draws yet another arrow and nocks it. “You had none for my children.”

He lets the arrow fly, but Hermes blinks out of existence before it meets its target, and the arrow sinks futilely into the ground.

There is half a heartbeat of heavy, stunned silence, while the thing riding Ben’s body stands rigid, one last arrow nocked. Then it lowers the bow, lets the arms so slack, slips the arrow back into the quiver.

Sam loosens his grip, lets his arm drop away from Dean, and Dean immediately starts forward, slow and cautious, a hand out like he’s approaching a rabid dog. “Ben?”

Ben’s body turns, and the metal-gold eyes fix on Dean. 

Dean stops dead. “Ben?”

“Ben’s fine.” Its eyes flicker to Artemis. “But she isn’t. Help her, please.”

Then the gold eyes go dark and Ben’s body slumps to the ground, unconscious.

* * *

Sam braces Artemis’s right shoulder with his left hand and wraps his right hand around the hilt of the curved short sword protruding from her left shoulder. He flexes his fingers, gets a good grip, and says, “Was that you using compulsion mojo on me and Dean?”

Artemis looks up at him from beneath her bangs, her hands tight on the edge of the library table, waiting for him to pull out the sword. Her eyes are glassy with pain, and a few strands of her long, dark hair stick to her tear-dampened cheek.

“I told you I was your goddess.”

“Do it again to either of us,” Sam says, and yanks hard and sudden, dragging the blade out of her shoulder with a wrenching pull, “and I’ll kill you.” 

She cries out, bends forward, wrapping one hand over the wound. Human-red blood gushes between her fingers and pours down her back, though there’s an extra gleam to it, flecks of gold like craft glitter sparkling under the library lights.

Sam tosses the bloody sword on the floor for now and pushes her back, knocks her hand away so he can press thick pads of gauze to either side.

“I’m sure you’d try,” she says after she’s taken half a dozen deep breaths. There a few tears of pain trailing down her cheek, and she’s docile while Sam wraps more gauze around her shoulder, a slap-dash triage job until the bleeding stops and he can bandage it properly.

He guides her into a chair, where she slumps, breathing heavily, hand over the spot where Mercury had his hand in her.

“You done with her?” Dean says, stomping into the room, all focused fury and wrath of God. 

“ Yeah,” Sam says, tossing the gauze and padding back into the first aid kit. “For now.”

“Good.” Dean slaps his hands down on the table next to Artemis, and leans into her space. “Talk.”

Artemis’s expression is blank of all but stone-like indifference. “About what?”

“About what’s happening to Ben, if he even is Ben. About why Mercury, who I know for a fact was killed by Lucifer, is trying to kill my kid.”

“Hermes,” she says.

Dean blinks. “What?”

“The god you just met was Hermes.”

Dean straightens, crosses his arms. “Isn’t it the same guy, different name?” 

“Not precisely, though right now the biggest difference between the two is that Mercury is dead while Hermes is not.”

“That cleared up nothing at all.” Dean’s impatience and frustration are obvious, and he’s got a look on his face like he’d like to tie her down and start extracting information with the blade of a knife. It always scares Sam a little, Dean on edge like this.

Artemis sighs contemptuously. “You’re a brother. A son.” She quirks an eyebrow at Dean in a manner that can only be described as contemptuous. “A father. Now imagine having that aspect of yourself ripped from you like an appendage or an organ. You still exist, just not all of you.”

Sam gets it immediately; he’s intimately familiar with having something vital ripped out. “So you’re saying when Lucifer slaughtered those gods in Muncie, the Roman aspect of Hermes died, but not the Greek?”

“Basically. I can’t imagine how painful it was, pulling away from his other aspect like that.” She pauses for half a breath and her eyes go distant like she’s giving it the old college try. Finally she shakes her head. “He was holding onto his sanity by a thread before that, but the separation from his Mercury aspect has driven him mad.”

“So, what are we looking at here, Artemis?” Sam’s pretty sure he knows already, but he’s going to ask anyway. “I mean, he caused a tsunami in the Atlantic, and Chicago’s burning. That’s apocalypse level destruction, and you guys aren’t that powerful anymore. What exactly is he doing with the souls of those children to gain all that power?”

“Titan magic.” Her mouth twists in disgust. “He probably used the demon he trapped in that devil’s trap at first, making it fetch the souls of the children while he holed up in that house convalescing, but now he’s strong enough to do it himself.”

“What do you mean, Titan magic?” Dean asks.

“Before I was born, my grandfather Kronos – I’m sure you remember him, I understand you killed him.” Artemis eyes them both pointedly, though she doesn’t seem too upset by the loss. “Kronos heard a prophecy that he would be overthrown by his sons as he had overthrown his own father. So as my aunts and uncles were born, he swallowed them.”

Sam nods. “Right, except for Zeus, who Rhea hid away. I know the story. But how is that Titan magic?”

“Titan magic is basically cannibalism, except instead of consuming flesh, it’s the consumption of a god’s _numen_ , our divinity.”

“Your souls.” Sam says.

Artemis nods. “In essence, yes. Mortals can be used, but their souls don’t have enough divinity nor the right kind to return us to godhood. They can really only be used to give us temporary flesh – that’s how Asclepius usually gets by - but once the souls are gone, the body is useless. But the kind of power Hermes has acquired? It would take millions of mortal souls to give him even a fraction of his current power. But since the children Hermes has destroyed are Apollo’s children, and therefore have a small spark of his _numen_ , he’s been able to rebuild his power enough to begin consuming those of us who are weaker.”

“So, they’ve got the right kinds of spices and seasonings. Got it.” Dean’s less angry now, but more scared, but he’s up there at the edge of the abyss again. Sam can see it in his eyes. “And Ben? What’s happening to him? Because there’s something riding him, and it’s about time it finds a new place to hide.”

“It’s Apollo,” Artemis says.

“What do you mean ‘it’s Apollo.’”

“I mean,” Artemis says, irritated, “the _numen_ of my brother, Apollo, the god of music, medicine, and prophecy, is lodged in Ben’s chest, devouring his soul. Titan magic.”

“How?” Dean asks. “How did it get there?”

“I don’t know.”

“How do we get it out?”

“I don’t know.”

Dean huffs impatiently. “Do you know anything?”

“No. I don’t,” Artemis snaps, clearly frustrated. “I honestly don’t even know how Ben is still functional and cognizant. Apollo’s _numen_ should have withered his soul away to little more than a candle flame by now. But Ben is a divine child and the strongest we’ve had in millennia, so the usual rules don’t seem to apply.”

“You’ve said that before.” Sam is getting rather frustrated himself. For every question they get an answer to, another one pops up. “That Ben is the strongest child you’ve had in millennia. What do you mean?”

“In another time, there may have been a beast to kill or a quest to complete. He would have been able to visit the Underworld and return again. His name would have echoed through history in epic and song-“

“Wait,” Sam says. “Are you saying he’s a Greek hero?”

Dean runs one hand over his mouth, paces away a few steps and back again. “No, hey, why not? Sam’s Lucifer’s vessel. I’m Michael’s. Ben’s a Greek hero. It all makes sense, now.”

Artemis rolls her eyes. “Is the hysteria really necessary?”

“Dean, dude, calm down.”

Dean flaps one hand at Artemis. “Sam, she’s saying Ben is a Greek hero.”

Sam shrugs. “Well, could be worse, right? Remember Jesse Turner? Remember that guy in Missouri who didn’t know he was a Rugaru? I feel like we’re getting off easy, here.”

“You’re not just getting off easy,” Artemis snaps, waspish. “You should be honored that you were chosen to be his mortal father. Ben is a powerful healer, and if the prophecy is anything to go by, the strength of his power hasn’t even begun to manifest itself.”

Sam stiffens, and Dean gives him a startled, terrified look.

“What prophecy?” Sam says.

Artemis looks between them, licks her lips uneasily. She clearly hadn’t meant to say that.

Dean takes a threatening step towards her. “Artemis, what prophecy?” 

Artemis tenses, like she’s preparing for an attack, but she doesn’t answer.

Another menacing step from Dean, and Sam tenses, about to grab him. He can’t let Dean kill their only source. 

“I’m only going to ask you one more time.” Dean’s voice is hard. “What proph-“

A heavy pounding comes from above, cutting Dean off. They all look up, startled by the sound.

“Is that...knocking?” Dean asks.

Sam nods. “Yeah, I think so.”

Dean grabs the Colt while Sam grabs an angel blade.

“Don’t move,” Dean says, sternly aiming one finger Artemis before he heads up the stairs.

The knocking starts up again, and as they open the inner door, it becomes pounding, and someone is shouting, too.

“Dean! Open the door!”

It’s a woman’s voice. Sam doesn’t recognize it and shoots his brother a questioning look; Dean just shrugs. “No idea, dude.”

Sam a hand on the lever, angel blade raised and ready. With a nod from Dean, he throws it open with a heavy metal creak, and Dean swings into the doorway, gun raised. 

A woman in workout clothes and a heavy down jacket is on the other side of the door. When she sees them, sees the gun aimed at her face, she stumbles backwards with a gasp, eyes wild with terror, her hands half raised like this is a hold up. 

They all stare at each other in surprise for half a heartbeat. 

Then Dean lowers the gun and says in a voice strained with disbelief, “Lisa? What are you doing here?” 

Lisa Braeden drops her hands, her terror quickly becoming fury. “That’s an excellent question, Dean. Now where the hell is my son?”

Lisa nearly drives into a tree when the guy in the trench coat suddenly appears in the middle of the road.

One minute there’s nothing, just a dark stretch of road, and the next she gets just a glimpse of a person shaped thing in the gleam of her headlights before a body is tumbling over her hood.

Her heart leaps into her throat, and her stomach bottoms out. She slams on the brakes reflexively; the car skids to the left, the squeal of the tires high and piercing, comes to a stop half on the shoulder, just shy of a huge oak tree.

She sits there for a minute, shaking. 

She has just hit a person with her car.

Shit. 

She has just hit a _person_ with her _car_.

Her heart is pounding so hard she thinks it might burst through her chest as she scrabbles at the door frantically. She stumbles out into the road, the door open noise beeping at her insistently, and rushes over to the guy, surprised to see that he is already getting to his feet casual and easy, like he didn’t just go flying over the hood of her CRV. 

“Oh, hey, stop,” she says, hands hovering just short of touching him. “Don’t move. Let me call an ambulance.”

“There is no need.” He straightens his coat with a shrug of his shoulders. “I am well.”

“But I just hit you with my car.” She gestures at the CRV, still idling on the shoulder of the road, just to make sure he understands the gravity of the situation.

“I know. My landing was badly timed.” He turns in a circle, the tails of his coat swinging, an expression of consternation on his face. “It is eight-twenty.”

“Uh, yeah?” Lisa is caught off guard by the non-sequitur; he seems distracted, scattered. He may look okay, but he could have a concussion or something.

He stops, looks her over like he is seeing her for the first time. “There is nothing present that is a threat to you.”

Alarms are starting to go off. Lisa takes a step back. She’s alone on a dark road with a strange man who rolled over the hood of her car without any apparent harm. All those urban legends about women being abducted under unusual circumstances come to mind – rapists impersonating police officers, a serial killer luring a woman from her homes with a recording of a baby crying, men slipping into the back seat of a car while the victim is pumping gas. She doesn’t usually leap to such hysterical conclusions, but she was going at least 40, the CRV is pretty big, and yet here he is, walking around no worse for the wear.

Something just isn’t right here.

She starts backing away. “So, um, you seem alright. I’ll just be going now.”

The guy’s attention jerks back to her again, his brow furrowing. “Please don’t be afraid, Lisa.”

Fear jolts through her body. “How did you know my-“

But she has no time to finish the question before the man is reaching out, touching two fingers to her forehead.

Her spine thrums, the vibration running up along the line of her chakras, and then suddenly she has a head full of memories that hadn’t been there a moment before: Dean, young and pretty, and grinning across a pool table. Dean, standing on her doorstep, broken beyond her ability to comprehend. Dean, under her SUV, patiently explaining to Ben how to change the oil. Dean, roaming the house at night because he can’t sleep, a glass of whiskey in hand, checking the devil’s traps under the rugs and the salt lines in the windows. Dean, raking the leaves in the backyard like it’s a ride at Disney World. Dean, bringing Ben back to her after the changeling burst into flames right before her eyes. Dean, pressed up against her in the kitchen, stealing a kiss before Ben comes in to make gagging noises at their PDA. Dean, tolerating Sarah’s chattering and Bill’s dickery with far more patience than Lisa sometimes managed. Dean, telling her he would have been proud to be Ben’s father.

Dean, shoulders heaving, crying silently for Sam when he thinks she’s not looking.

Dean, his voice coming from a great distance, forcing the demon loose while she struggles against the dark presence holding her soul captive.

“What the hell?” She puts a hand to her head. She feels disoriented, displaced; nothing has changed, yet everything has changed. Dean isn’t in her life anymore, but Ben is, and she can’t look at Ben without seeing Dean. Except for the past two years, she had, had looked at her son and wondered who his father might be. “Did I forget Dean?”

It’s meant to be a rhetorical question, but the guy she just hit with her car answers. “Yes. Dean felt that you would be safer if you didn’t remember him.”

It takes her a minute to process what he had just said. 

Lisa jerks her attention back to him. “Wait. _Dean_ did this?”

“Don’t be angry at Dean. He was scared and grieving. I should have said no.” 

“Don’t be angry?” There’s this sound that comes out of her. She might say it is a laugh, but it’s too harsh, too bitter. English has no word for the feeling rising up within her, flooding through her in a burst of adrenaline and fury. It’s too big and too hot, too immense to use such paltry terms as anger or rage, too sickening and painful to be called betrayal. “Are you kidding me?”

He cocks his head to the side, bird-like. “I would not joke about such a serious matter.”

His deadpan response makes her pause. She looks him over, adds up the trench coat and his inability to understand idiom and his lack of injury. “You must be Castiel.” 

“Yes.”

“You’re an angel.”

“Yes.”

“Shouldn’t you know better?”

He considers her grimly. “Perhaps.” His attention wanders away again. He scans the road, the trees, the darkness. “It’s eight twenty-five.”

“So?” She’s a little distracted herself. So many of her memories had been rewritten, those five days when Ben was conceived had been utterly erased, the thing with the changelings had been changed into the kids sneaking out to play in a half built house, the year Dean had lived with them a year of memories riddled with holes.

And the accident that had been a kidnapping and demon possession, an oily black cloud that had suffocated her soul, burrowing into her deepest thoughts and memories, controlling her body like a puppet on strings-

She shudders, pushes away the memory of literal evil coursing through her veins. She really wants to sit down, preferably with a stiff drink and possibly some kind of prescription sedative.

“There is still no threat,” Castiel says.

Lisa comes out of her daze of unwanted memories. “What are you talking about?”

A car comes around a distant corner, its headlights swinging through the darkness before falling on them. Castiel stares into the light, head cocked to the side. His eyes are an arresting shade of blue.

He nods to himself. “I see,” he says, and takes her by the arm.

Before she can protest, there’s the rustle of wings, a split second of nothingness—

And then they’re on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere. Wind whispers through the tree tops, backed by the deep silence only found in the countryside. The stars glitter crisply over their heads. There’s a river behind them and a half-buried, abandoned building in front of them, old and out of place on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere. 

And parked out in front, the Impala, gleaming in the moonlight.

“Where are we?” She turns in a circle. “Where’s my CRV?”

“Lebanon, Kansas,” Castiel replies, distracted again, his eyes turned skyward. “I do not know where your vehicle is.”

Something like panic claws at her. “ _Kansas_? How are we in Kansas?”

“I brought us here.” Castiel finally turns his attention to her. “I must go.”

“What?”

“It is dangerous for me to remain any longer. Just knock on that door. Ben is waiting for you.”

“Ben? Wait.” She starts to ask how the hell Ben got from their couch in Michigan to some abandoned building in Kansas, but there is the rustle of wings, and the angel is just gone.

But the Impala is here, so Dean must be here. If not Dean, then Sam. And whoever it is had better give her some answers. 

She circles around the car, fingers trailing across the hood just to make sure it’s real, then trots down the half-flight of stairs to the metal door. It’s inscribed with a stylized A, or maybe it’s a star. It doesn’t matter, she supposes, as long as the door opens from the other side.

Lisa raises her hand and knocks.


	13. Chapter 13

They don’t want to let her in at first.

Sam insists that she drink holy water and nicks her with a small, silver knife. Dean looms between her and the door, watching her warily, his gun lowered but ready to be raised at any second. Then comes the interrogation, where she came from, how she got there. And once they hear that she has just been teleported from Michigan to Kansas by their angel friend, she has to describe him in detail, tell them what he said and how he said it, and describe what it felt like to be teleported. 

Lisa’s glad that they’re being cautious in protecting Ben, making sure she’s who she says she is, but she’s also annoyed and frustrated and scared. All she wants to do is see Ben, but Dean is flashing all of his avoidance body language at her, studied and well learned during that year he had shared her bed and her son and her life, and that only makes it worse. 

Then he takes her to Ben.

He is a deathly pale lump under half a dozen blankets, his lips colorless, eyes sunken. He’s still and gaunt, a shadow of the healthy boy she had left at home only a few hours ago. He doesn’t stir as she touches him, feels the heat of his forehead with the back of her hand. He’s burning up, and his breath is so shallow and slow that if she hadn’t touched him, she would have thought he was dead.

“Ben?” Lisa eases down on the bed next to him, ghosts a shaking hand over his hair. It’s so long; how had she not noticed it was time for him to get a haircut? “Baby?”

His eyes open, just a crack, but they open. 

“Mom?” His voice is a croak, barely audible.

Lisa nods, tears pricking her eyes. “Yes, baby. It’s me.” 

“You’re not dead?”

“No.” She strokes his hair, brushes it off of his forehead. “I’m not dead. Why did you think I was dead?”

Ben reaches out and wraps one arm around her, laying his head in her lap. She strokes his hair, and he sighs contentedly just before he goes limp. 

Lisa panics a little. “Ben?”

Dean shifts uneasily in the doorway. “He’s been sleeping a lot the last couple of days.”

It takes her a minute for what he said to sink in. “What do you mean the last couple of days? I left him alone at home just a few hours ago.”

He runs a hand over his mouth, his biggest, most worrisome tell, and Lisa’s blood runs cold. 

“Damn it, Dean, tell me what’s going on.”

He rubs the back of his neck, shifts uneasily again. "What day do you think it is?"

A surge of anger dulls her fear. "Thursday. What the hell does that have to do with anything?"

"I mean, the date.”

"February 21st."

"Lise, it’s March 28th,” Dean says. “Cas time travelled you. You’ve been missing for a little over a month now. That’s why Ben thought you were dead.”

She stares at him blankly, numb with shock. “Wait, are you saying that I didn’t just lose all my memories, I lost a month of my life?”

Dean nods, as grim and solemn as the grave. “Yeah.”

Her world shifts, slides sideways. She’d accuse him of lying, but she knows he wouldn’t, not about this. Lisa looks down at the pale husk of her son, pets his hair again, tells herself not to lose her shit, not now, not when Ben needs her. But she feels untethered, like she’s adrift at sea with no land in sight; she’s as freaked out as she had been when the demons killed Matt and took them, and she half expects another demon to slam into her at any minute to take control.

“Uh, Lise?” Dean takes a few very cautious steps towards her, his body language cowed and contrite just like Ben when he’s done something he knows is wrong. And he should be approaching her as cautiously as he fucking can, because she’s in a pretty volatile place right now.

Dean takes a step towards her. “Lisa? Look, I-”

She holds up one hand, cutting off whatever he is going to say before he can set her off. “Dean, just shut up. I need a minute.” She pauses, considering. “And a stiff drink.”

* * *

It turns out, while only about an hour had passed since Castiel tumbled over the hood of her car and nearly caused her to plow into a tree, thirty-five _days _had passed for Ben. Thirty-five long, terrifying days, during which he thought she was dead, had slipped Sarah and Bill’s watch, and somehow ended up half-starved in Florida with a fairly serious case of pneumonia.__

__It explains why his hair is so long._ _

__Lisa cuddles the empty glass to her chest to remind her that there’s still a world of mundane things, lets the hot burn of the whiskey in the pit of her stomach keep her grounded. “Why would Castiel do that to me?”_ _

__“No idea.” Dean is slumped over the table across from her, arm resting along the edge, hand dangling off. “He’s been off the reservation for a couple of weeks now. Sounds like he thought you were in danger of some kind.”_ _

__“Maybe that’s why Ben was outside, earlier.” Sam is leaning against the kitchen island and shifting around like a nervous prom date meeting his girlfriend’s dad for the first time. She doesn’t remember him being this awkward; when she first met him, he had seemed powerful and intimidating and nothing at all like nerdy little brother that Dean had described. She sees it now, though, Dean’s version of Sam, in the way he hunches his shoulders and tries to blend into the background, as if his six foot four bulk can blend into anything, in the way he gives her gentle, sympathetic eyes, speaks in a calm, even voice, a diametrical counter point to Dean’s simmering anxiety._ _

__“You know what? It doesn’t matter. What’s done is done.” She slides the tumbler across the table to Dean. “One more.”_ _

__Dean pours her another shot of whiskey, watches her carefully as she takes a drink and coughs around the burn. “You okay, Lis?”_ _

__“Yeah, just trying to adjust to time travel on top of demons and angels and djinn.” She’s usually a mellow person, doesn’t lose her cool too often, can take a lot of weird and roll with it, but right now, she wants to start screaming and never, ever stop. But Ben has to come first, so she swallows down the urge with another mouthful of whiskey. “Tell me about Ben. What’s happening to Ben?”_ _

__“Titan magic.”_ _

__There is a woman in the doorway, as tall as Dean on her four inch boot heels, her black leather ensemble more suited to a spy movie than real life, such as it is. One shoulder is wrapped with a bloody bandage, and she is holding the opposite hand over her diaphragm like she’s got heartburn. She’d be striking any other time, but right now, she looks like she’s spent some time being dragged around by a team of wild horses after a three day bender._ _

__“Who are you?” Lisa asks._ _

__Sam gives the woman a scathing look. “This is Artemis.”_ _

__“Good job with those handcuffs, Sam,” Dean says._ _

__“Bite me, Dean. I told you they didn’t have the right sigils.”_ _

__“Artemis?” Lisa says, stuck on the name, because, come on. Can’t be. “Like the goddess?”_ _

__The woman doesn’t answer, just quirks an eyebrow at her, like she expects better._ _

__Lisa sighs, shoulders slumping in defeat. “There are gods.”_ _

__“Yeah. And they’re pretty much all real, except for the dead ones.” Dean holds up the whiskey bottle. “Need another?”_ _

__Lisa shakes her head. She’s got enough of the hard stuff burning away the lining of her stomach and getting wasted won’t help anything, not the situation or her acceptance of it._ _

__“Fine. Whatever. There are gods, too.” She dismisses it with a sloppy wave of her hand. “Friendly or hostile?”_ _

__“Friendly,” Artemis says._ _

__“Hostile,” Dean says._ _

__“That remains to be seen,” Sam says._ _

__Lisa sighs. She’s starting to feel like she’s stuck in a _Three Stooges_ short or something. “Just somebody please tell me what the fuck is going on.”_ _

__Sam and Dean hesitate, share a look of trepidation._ _

__“Ben is dying.” This from Artemis, who drags the last chair out from under the kitchen table with a screech, and drops heavily into it._ _

__“What?” Lisa says, heart dropping into the pit of her stomach._ _

__Dean expression goes hard. “Stay out if this.”_ _

__Artemis gives him this look that could melt metal and flicks her hand in his direction. Dean starts to speak, but nothing comes out, and he holds his hand up to his throat, opening and closing his mouth uselessly. His expression is thunderous, and he starts to rise, but Artemis pins him with a steely look._ _

__“Sit and be still.”_ _

__Dean drops back into his seat, and Sam, behind her, has come up off the kitchen island, shoulders squared, a sense of danger about him. No more blending into the scenery, no more trying to hide that bulk. This is that other little brother, the one she met before Dean left them, the one who had made her skin crawl with his slick confidence._ _

__Artemis tosses a casual glance over her shoulder, unconcerned by Sam’s threat. “You, as well.”_ _

__Sam freezes where he stands._ _

__Neither Winchester looks much like the other, and Lisa would have never known they were brothers if Dean hadn’t told her, but their expressions are twinned fury. Dean’s eyes are hard and cold, Sam’s eyes are narrowed like he’s trying to set Artemis on fire by sheer will alone. She knows they have to be hard to do what they do, but getting this glimpse of it is...chilling._ _

__“Now, be calm, both of you, and stay where you are. I’ll release you in a moment,” Artemis says in the same irritated tone Lisa’s own mother used to use when she put her or Sarah in the corner for misbehavior. She faces Lisa again, all business. “Lisa and I need to speak.”_ _

__Lisa’s eyes flicker between Dean and Sam. “What did you do to them?”_ _

__“Nothing they won’t recover from. They were going to try to be gentle because this is as personal for them as it is for you, but I have neither the time nor the patience for gentling the truth. I think you probably feel the same way.”_ _

__A part of Lisa wants to stick her fingers in her ears and start singing ‘lalalala’ at the top of her lungs. Another part wants to give in and start screaming. What little resolve she has only remains because Ben has to come first, and neither man seems to be in pain or harmed in any way._ _

__“Go ahead,” she says._ _

__Artemis isn’t gentle. She lays it out for Lisa, starkly and painfully blunt: a god who should be dead is using magic to rebuild his power with the souls of divine children, and most recently, other gods. It has set its sights on Ben, which is why he’s been on the run for a month. And somewhere along the way, Ben has ended up with the soul of a different dead god lodged in his chest, leeching his life away._ _

__“So Ben is possessed.” The memory of her own possession, two years old but nearly brand new, has the makings of future night terrors. That Ben is suffering the same thing is unacceptable, and she is terrified for him, almost gets up and leaves the room just to sit with him again._ _

__Then it gets worse._ _

__“Yes and no” Artemis says. “It isn’t voluntary possession; Apollo would no more have willingly harmed his own child than you would.”_ _

__A shadow passes over Lisa’s soul; the memory of a dusty tent on a hot summer’s day in 1997, the words of an old woman with milky, blind eyes and paper-dry hands – they try to rise up, to make her remember, but no. Just no. This she’ll deny. Everything else, okay, she’ll accept. But not this._ _

__“I don’t understand why Ben was targeted at all.” Such a lie, but if she allows for the possibility of what Artemis is implying, even for one moment, she might shatter into a thousand pieces._ _

__Artemis’s ice and steel eases into something that is shockingly like sympathy. “Lisa, Ben is one of those divine children.”_ _

__Lisa laughs. It’s that harsh bitter sound again, that thing that is a laugh in name only. “What the fuck are you talking about? Dean is his father.”_ _

__She just throws it out there. It's reckless and insensitive, she knows, and with the way Dean flinches, it might even be hurtful. She had assumed he'd figured it out a long time ago, assumed by the way he would look at Ben, contemplative and affectionate, the way he would always be so careful with him, so protective._ _

__But maybe not. Maybe this is a big shock to him. Maybe he had believed her stupid blood test lie, even after living with them for a year and teaching Ben how to change the oil and cooking him breakfast and going to all of his baseball games where he never corrected people when they assumed Dean was his father. Maybe he’ll hate her because she didn’t tell him sooner, maybe he would have stayed had he known._ _

__Maybe, maybe, maybe._ _

__She can't think about this in maybes though, can’t fret over her choices now. What’s done is done, and she believes she made the right choice in the end, all things considered. Honestly, she'd rather face Dean's anger and condemnation for lying about Ben than this other thing they’re telling her. She'd let him yell, curse, even hit her if he felt the need. Hell, she'd even let the erasing her memories thing slide, call it even and be done with it, if he wanted._ _

__He can have anything, _anything_ , as long as what they are telling her isn't true._ _

__“Yes. But so is Apollo.”_ _

__The tent, the thick, dusty heat, the old woman’s voice, as dry and papery as her hands-_ _

__Lisa comes to her feet. “Absolutely not. That’s crazy.”_ _

__Artemis waves a lazy hand at Sam and Dean. “All yours, gentlemen.”_ _

__Both men erupt out of their forced stillness. Sam starts forward, Dean flows to his feet, both exuding fury and menace._ _

__“You, bitch.” Dean’s voice is a throaty growl, but Lisa’s mom instincts kick in before he can get another word out._ _

__“Five dollars in the swear jar,” she snaps on automatic._ _

__Everyone stops, looks at her in surprise. The building threat of violence wanes; apparently the absurdity of what Lisa has just said is more powerful than Winchester anger._ _

__“Gendered insults are five dollars in the swear jar at home,” she says in response to their startled stares. “When Ben started middle school, he kept bringing home bad words.” She takes a deep breath to steady herself because that urge to scream? It’s right there, right behind the tattered remains of her sanity. “Dean, tell me what she’s saying isn’t true.”_ _

__Dean’s expression is bleak, his anger forgotten. “It’s true.”_ _

__“Oh, please, he’s yours, Dean.” She gestures back towards the bedroom, where Ben lies, pale and wasted. “Look at him. Just look. And the way he flirts, and his smiles – no, there’s just no way.”_ _

__“That ‘s true,” Artemis says. “Dean is his father genetically. It’s camouflage, so the human father won’t question the child’s paternity. But he’s also Apollo’s.”_ _

__The hot tent, the old woman, her words; Lisa feels the foundation of her whole world teetering dangerously on its axis. “No. That’s unacceptable. My son is a perfectly normal.”_ _

__“Lisa, Ben heals too fast,” Sam says. “He never gets sick, and neither do you, right? Not often, anyway. And neither did your sister and her family when you lived in the same town. And you’ve always felt compelled to hide his abilities, even though you think he’s perfectly normal.”_ _

__Lisa feels sick. Her skin is crawling with the realization of what that means._ _

__“So that wasn’t you in the bar? Did I spend five days with... with...?” She flaps her hand, unable to voice it._ _

__“No, that was me, but I was only with you for four days.”_ _

__Lisa shakes her head. She shouldn’t waste time with denial, but she can’t help it. This is all too much. “No. You stayed Thursday through Sunday morning, and then reappeared Sunday night, saying your car broke down on your way out of town.”_ _

__“He didn’t, Lisa.” Sam’s voice is gentle, and he’s fired up those sensitive puppy dog eyes Dean was always on about. “He met up with our Dad and me in Athens that night. There’s no way he was with you.”_ _

__She looks to Dean for confirmation. He nods. “It’s true, Lisa. I’m so fucking sorry, but it’s true.”_ _

__Her brain stutters to a stop. About fourteen years ago, she had let a thing into her apartment one night, a thing that was wearing Dean’s face, and now her son, her baby, is alive but dying because of it. She can’t take any more explanations; if they tell her one more thing, she really will start screaming._ _

__Very calmly, very slowly, she tucks the chair back under the table, moving deliberately, all of her focus taken up by keeping her mind carefully blank._ _

__“I need a shower.” Her skin’s crawling, and she’s shaking. She had let something into her loft, let it take her to bed and she hadn’t even _known_. “Then I need to sit with Ben. And while that happens I need the three of you to sort this the fuck out. Am I clear?”_ _

__Dean nods. “Yeah, Lise. We’re on it. And if you want, I’ll show you where-“_ _

__She shakes her head. “No. Just point me in the right direction. I can’t look at you right now.”_ _

__Dean looks like _he_ might shatter into a thousand pieces. She knows what she has just said is cruel, but she can’t. She just can’t. Every internal resource she has seems to have been used up all in one go, and though she has always had a seemingly boundless ability to give comfort and acceptance, has given it to him in every way right up to the point where it endangers her son, she doesn’t have any to spare for him anymore._ _

__Even she has her limits._ _

__“Yeah, okay,” he says nodding, letting all the blame she just threw his way sink down on his shoulders. It’s one of the best and worst things about him, his self-sacrifice. “Down the hall, to the left. It’s at the end of the hallway.”_ _

__Lisa goes, finds the bathrooms easily enough, a huge, locker room style set up with marble floors and ceramic sinks and a huge, claw foot tub hidden behind a partition. She strips on automatic, sets the spray of the first showerhead as hot as she can stand it, lets the heat of the water wash over her body as she shudders and scrubs, trying to get the feeling of a fourteen year old violation off her skin._ _

__She’s not sure it will ever come off._ _

____

* * *

At midday, when the mortals are asleep, Artemis steps out of the musty, disused bedroom where Sam had confined her. She had been prepared for an attack after Lisa departed for the bathrooms; neither hunter was pleased with the compulsion she had placed on them, and she had not doubted Sam’s threat to kill her should she try to control them again. He had been seriously considering it, she had seen it in his eyes. But she is their only ally against Hermes, and she had seen the moment when strategic thinking won out over his anger and, defeated, he had shown her to a room.

She knew she liked him for a reason.

She threads her way through the Bunker to the room where the boy sleeps, stepping carefully around the various warding seals set into the marble floors. The boy is on his back, face turned towards his mother, pale and wasted as the Titan magic eats away his soul. Lisa is curled around him, one arm resting across his chest protectively. Dean is slumped in a chair next to the bed, an angel blade resting in his lap, his attempt to keep watch futile in the face of Apollo’s will and his own exhaustion.

She kneels next to the bed. “Brother?”

The boy stirs, turns his head to face her, but it is her brother’s eyes flashing out of Ben’s face, a sign of his growing power.

Apollo smiles fondly. “Sister.”

Relief floods through her. “I thought you had died. I came back to you after Father forced me to hunt Prometheus for him, but you were gone. I searched the whole earth, and you were nowhere. And then I found Ben and saw your _numen_ shining from his chest.” She hears the thickness of tears in her voice, and can’t bring herself to be ashamed. “Please tell me you didn’t do this disgusting thing purposely. Not to Ben.”

“No. It was Asclepius.” He gently lifts Lisa’s hand away and shifts onto his side. She does not wake. “He was the one who taught Hermes and Mercury how to use the Titan magic.”

Artemis feels nothing but disgust. “You should have never asked father to allow him to be resurrected.”

“Artemis,” Apollo says, begging her with sad eyes not to bring up that old argument.

Asclepius had always been their one point of contention, even more so than Apollo’s inability to stop deflowering her hunting maidens. Whatever her twin had seen in his son, Artemis could never mirror it, not as she could with his other children. She had despised the boy from the moment Apollo snatched him out of his mother’s burning corpse; Asclepius had always looked upon her with jealousy and contempt, had always tried to divert Apollo’s attention and draw him away from her. He never ceased coming up with audacious and unwise schemes to capture Apollo’s interest and had raised so many of the dead that Zeus struck him down with a thunderbolt to preserve the natural order. In retaliation, Apollo had laid waste to the Cyclopes who had fashioned Zeus’s thunderbolts and had set off a feud with their father that was only satisfied once Zeus had promoted the boy to godhood. 

As far as Artemis is concerned, Apollo should have left Asclepius to burn with his mother on the funeral pyre. He had been nothing but trouble, a needy parasite, an upset to the natural order, but Father had always favored Apollo most, had always given him what he wanted, even when Apollo rebelled. Only Athena had he favored more, and even that is up for debate.

Artemis lets it drop; there are larger fish to fry, as mortals liked to say.

“Is the boy still alive?” She had invested much in the boy, tireless hours of guard duty while the angels had been seeking a vessel for the archangel Michael, had even once risked her life fending off an angel who had made it as far as the foot of Ben’s bed.

“He is, though I have forced him to sleep.”

“Still?” she says, surprised. “Even after your attack on Hermes? The night was blazing bright with your glory. I was sure you had used up all the life he had left.”

Apollo smiles with pride, showing Ben’s dimples. “Ben is strong. His soul is holding up well, but then his vessel nature is meant to endure more divinity than mine. And the prophecy-”

“I know.” Dread settles in her bones. The prophecy. A death warrant she had begged him not to take up, knowing what it would mean if he fathered a child on Lisa Braeden. “Does this mean that you’ve figured out some way to separate from him?”

“I believe so.”

“And you will die.”

“Yes.”

Artemis shakes her head. “No. I can’t allow that. It’s my job as the elder sibling to protect you.”

Apollo scowls. “You’re only a day older.”

“And I helped mother birth you. I get to claim older sibling rights, and that means I’m not going to let you die.”

Apollo sighs. “Sister, there’s nothing to be done. The prophecy-“

“To hell with the prophecy. Finish the boy off and take his body and let’s hide. The Winchesters will eventually die, and we can come into the open again.” She doesn’t mean it, not really, but these past few weeks without her brother have been lonely and miserable; by killing Zeus, she had ostracized herself from her siblings. Had she not started making the regular checks on the children in Apollo’s place, she would have never known about their mysterious deaths or that Ben was missing. 

She would have never seen her brother again.

Apollo gazes at her sadly, his smile soft on Ben’s face. “You know better than I that the Winchesters are as adept at hunting and vengeance as we are. They are also as unnaturally blessed with good luck as they are cursed with bad. They would find us eventually, and need I remind you how many dead gods they can claim as their kills, Kronos and Osiris among them? Besides, this is just fear and panic. You would no more harm Ben than I would.” 

“But you’re my twin, and he’s a mortal nephew. I care for you more.”

“Please don’t choose me over him, Artemis. I couldn’t bear it.”

Artemis looks away. She has the overwhelming urge to cry, but she pushes it away. She has to stay strong for Apollo. He needs her strength.

“Artemis?” His voice is edged with a supplication.

Her chest hurts and her eyes burn, and what will she do without him? 

In the corner of her eye, she sees Apollo reach out and tug on a lock of her hair gently. “Artemis, to have a child like this as my legacy? A child of prophecy-“

“I know,” she says before he can say anything else, before he can put forth any more arguments that she will have to agree with. Because if there is one thing all gods understand, it is the nature of godly pride. “I know.” 

“You’ll do as I ask?”

She brings herself to look at him again, at his _numen_ looking out from Ben’s eyes. “I will.”

“And Ben?” Apollo pulls his finger from her hair, leaving a twisting little curl resting on her shoulder. “You’ll protect him and teach him? You know the prophecy and what it means. The Winchesters aren’t capable of preparing him for what is coming, not with the choices they will soon make.”

She nods, defeated. “Fine. I will do it.” She sighs. “I would do it anyway.”

“Swear you will on the River Styx.”

“You heard Hermes.” Artemis is uneasy with the request; why is he extorting an oath? “There is no more River Styx.”

“I know. It’s still the most powerful oath we have.”

Artemis sighs. “Very well. I swear on the River Styx though it no longer exists to protect and teach Ben.”

“Good. Then I need your help,” he says, heaving Ben’s body up and arranging it into a sitting position. Ben is wearing Dean’s clothes, a pair of soft black pants that mortals wear when exercising and a black t-shirt with _Styx_ printed across the front in stylized lettering. She glares at the t-shirt as Apollo settles, Dean’s larger clothing twisting around Ben’s smaller body; it’s a bad omen, as far as she is concerned, this t-shirt on top of Apollo’s extorted oath. “Are you strong enough to venture beyond the wards of this place?”

Artemis nods, pulls her attention away from the shirt, from every instinct that is demanding she protect her twin. “I believe so.”

She had spent the better part of the morning resting and calling out to her adherents, urging them to worship with wine and honey, with burnt offerings, and in the case of the personal shopper in L.A., to burn the vintage Chanel cocktail dress she had found in a thrift store in Hollywood. They had responded, building her power back up slowly, reducing the ache where Hermes had had his entire hand inside of her, trying to catch her _numen_ , slowly healing the hole he had made in her shoulder with the adamantine sword.

“Then I need you to find a liminal place as close by as possible. Something that would appeal to Hermes.”

“Why?” Oh, this is not to her liking. Bad omen indeed. “Because that sounds suicidal.”

“I am aware, but I had a good look at Ben’s dreams before I took away the prescience. I know what’s coming and what has to be done.”

“And what is that?”

He smiles a little, like he’s amused. “Nothing you’ll be pleased with.”

“I don’t doubt that,” she says dryly, and Apollo doesn’t even have the decency to look abashed. But then Apollo has rarely been one concerned with decency.

Behind her, Dean Winchester begins making sounds of distress in his sleep. She and Apollo look in his direction. His breathing is irregular and his eyes move rapidly behind his lids, a sign of troubling dreams.

“You should go before he wakes,” Apollo says quietly. “I need to discuss custody rights with him.”

Artemis turns back to her brother, kisses his forehead, an act of affection they rarely used before they lost their power and became confined to physical bodies. But bodies of flesh had a way of translating feelings and emotions into physical acts, and this one conveys her love and concern, a gentle blessing for whatever plan he has concocted that will tear her heart out.

She rises to her feet, steps cautiously over the dreaming Winchester’s twitching foot. At the door, she pauses.

“Apollo, what are you planning exactly?” 

Her brother smiles with the face of his youngest child, tight and vicious, unlike any smile that will ever cross Ben’s face again. Only the dark things that once lived in Tartarus can smile like that, the dark things of Tartartus and Leto’s twins.

“You know well what I plan.”

Artemis answers his smile with her own, soul calling to soul, like to like. Hermes was once their little brother, beloved and doted upon, but now he is a disease, a predator preying on his own kind. She knows exactly what her twin is planning, even if he is being vague about its execution.

“Good hunting, brother,” she says, and goes to carry out his last request.

* * *

Dean is dreaming of the night of the fire. The heat and smoke of it, the bright blaze coming out of Sammy’s room and Mommy nowhere to be found. Daddy puts the baby in his arms, tells him to take him outside as quick as he can. Sammy is heavy, but Dean holds on tight as he can as he runs out of the house; it’s a big responsibility, holding the baby. They’ve never let him hold Sammy alone before and he doesn’t want to mess this up, especially since Sammy is also Ben. When he gets outside, he kneels in the grass and lays Ben out, limp and unconscious. The house where his mother is burning casts Ben in flickering light and shadow, exacerbating the shadows under his eyes and the paleness of his skin, and Dean knows deep down in his soul that Ben is dead now because he had left him too long in a burning house-

Dean sits up abruptly, awake and alert, skin crawling with the knowledge of being watched. The chair underneath him creaks loudly with the shift of weight. Lisa shifts uneasily in her sleep. 

It’s Ben who watches him. He sits cross-legged on the bed, one knee resting lightly on Lisa’s thigh, his hands curled in his lap. His face still has that death-bed pallor, his eyes that sunken, bruised look, and he looks small and fragile in Dean’s clothes, more so now with the Titan magic eating away his soul. His eyes are yellow, not the milky, diseased yellow of old Yellow Eyes, but reflective and metallic, like the foil paper around chocolate candies, the deep yellow-gold of a dollar coin.

It isn’t Ben watching him at all.

“Good afternoon, Dean,” says Ben who isn’t Ben says. “We should talk.”

“Titan magic and witchcraft.” Apollo watches the disembodied demon buzzing around in its prison with distaste. Upstairs, there is a bare mattress stained with blackened ichor and a pile of mortal books on witchcraft and demonology piled on the floor. He hadn’t expected anything like this, yet, somehow, he is completely unsurprised. His baby brother is a trickster god, after all. “This was your back up plan.”

They are behind him on the stairs, his brother the thief and his son the traitor, conspirators in the murder of all but ten of his children. He’s disgusted and furious, and the weight of the adamantine sword once used to slay Medusa is heavy in his hand.

“You didn’t think I would walk into that idiotic plan without one, did you?” Hermes footsteps on the stairs are muffled by the demon magic polluting the air. “I mean, lure Lucifer and Michael into a trap using their vessels as bait? Stupid was written all over it.”

“And yet you agreed to assist them.” 

Apollo turns; Hermes stands casually at the foot of the stairs, smirking in that way that says he got one over on his big brother yet again. The golden gleam of his eyes stands as a testament to how great his power has grown since his campaign of familicide began. Asclepius is a few steps up, eyes wide and terrified. Apollo can’t even look at him; he is wearing David, his own sibling. The first time he taught his son how to use Titan magic in order to acquire a physical body, Apollo had expressly forbidden him to take divine children from their Pantheon or any other, but he had clearly underestimated the breadth of his son’s sibling rivalry.

“ _Mercury_ agreed to assist them, against my protests.” Hermes’s face twists in disgust. “He was always too damned subservient for our own good. And he died for it.” 

“And you ripped yourself away.” The wound where Hermes’s Greek and Roman aspects had separated is ragged and grisly; Hermes’s _numen_ throbs with an unhealable wound, dripping ichor down his side steadily.

Hermes nods, takes a few casual steps towards Apollo. “With great difficulty. Had the Morning Star destroyed our _numen_ as thoroughly as he had the others, I would have never escaped.”

“And your recourse was to kill my children?” Grief floods through him, grief at the deaths of his murdered children, at his brother’s madness, at the intersection of the two. “There were other ways.”

“True. I could have whored out my divinity to mortals in exchange for worship,” Hermes says, his tone sly and sharp with disdain, “but I didn’t want to be accused of being a copy cat.”

Hermes’s comment is meant to shame him, to slip a knife between a kink in his armor, but Apollo had long ago come to terms with his methods of survival. His children are strong and beautiful and talented, and in exchange, he staves off madness born from worship deprivation for another century. 

“Desperate times, brother,” Apollo says with a shrug. “At least I am not the one resorting to Kronos’s crime to survive.”

Apollo’s jab should have elicited its own fair share of shame. Kronos crime had always been reviled, and his grandfather had been living in exile long before his birth. He has always been the boogey man in their metaphorical closets, a warning away from the dark magic of their ancestors, a lesson in the sins of godly cannibalism. They had even taught the mortals not to devour their own kind and had punished those who did so severely and eternally.

Hermes just smirks, as impervious to shame as Apollo is. “And between the two of us, who’s more powerful for it?”

“That remains to be seen.” Apollo raises the adamantine sword. It feels wrong in his hands, too bulky, too slow. His bow and arrows would have been the better weapons, but he had lost his quiver to an audacious occultist during the Greek War of Independence, and one worked with what one had. 

Hermes raises an eyebrow derisively. “Perseus’s sword? Really?”

Apollo shrugs. “Kronos’s crime calls for execution.”

“We’re using legal terminology, now?” Hermes frowns. “Did Father send you? Because I’ll be very disappointed in my headstrong big brother if you actually got permission for this.”

“No. This is vengeance, and I’ve never asked Father’s permission for that.”

“Vengeance?” Hermes leans forward conspiratorially. “Big brother, I’m too powerful for your vengeance now.”

“Father, he’s right.” Hearing Asclepius speaking with David’s voice is like nails on a chalkboard or the harsh squawk of a crow; Apollo is so disappointed in his son, so furious that he would allow his petty jealousy towards his siblings advance to such a state. He may have to kill his eldest child to save David, and there’s a part of him that will relish the act. “He’s too powerful now. Please, don’t.”

“Although I appreciate the endorsement, nephew, do shut up,” Hermes says, his eyes remaining fixed on Apollo like a predator with prey in his sights. “The grownups are talking.”

“Yes,” Apollo says, keeping an eye on his brother as he sidles to the left to give himself the space to lunge properly. “Be silent. I will deal with you next.”

They circle each other like a pair of feral hounds fighting over a hare. There’s a gleam of madness in Hermes eyes that Apollo has seen in so many of his pantheon, brought on by the loss of worship and belief, of the bone deep faith that had brought blood and wine to their altars for millennia. Without worship and sacrifice, so many gods have turned to eating the flesh of humans to absorb the crumbs of soul carried in mortal blood and meat, crumbs of a larger feast they were once so willing to give on the altar. Now he has only a handful of siblings who still resist the lure of such paltry and debasing sustenance, and to his great sadness, he can’t even count Hermes in that number.

He supposes it is no great surprise that the eating of human flesh has progressed to the outright devouring of souls.

Hermes smirks at him. “You know you’ve always been useless at hand to hand. It’s going to be embarrassingly easy for me to disarm you.” Hermes makes a beckoning gesture; the sword flies from Apollo’s hand into his with a meaty smack. Hermes grins razor sharp. “See?”

It is the sin of all big brothers that they never learn to see their little brothers as equals, that they always try to heal and protect and save them, to keep them from the horrors of reality. Apollo is as guilty of that sin as any mortal; he will forever see Hermes as the little godling who once traipsed after him everywhere and lit up from the inside out when he let him tag along with him. He often forgets that Hermes is the god of thieves and trickery, that on the day of his birth, his first act was to steal Apollo’s cattle and lie through his teeth about it until Zeus made him fess up. 

As he stands there watching Hermes examine the sword with a critical eye, just now so easily taken from his own hand with the strength of Hermes’s will, Apollo has the awful, sickening realization that his little brother is gone, the little brother he had protected, even after the madness set in. This thing in front of him has replaced that dearly loved little brother, this ravenous murderer who will devour everything in his path until reality begins to crumble under the weight of his desecration.

For the first time in a long, long time, Apollo feels fear.

“Still beautiful,” Hermes murmurs. “I thought it was buried with Perseus.”

“A grave robber looted it from a tomb in Egypt a few centuries ago.” He keeps his voice even and light, like he’s just having a casual chat with his brother, like he’s not trying to calculate a way out of this. He can’t disarm Hermes; he’s too strong. He can’t just jump through space to escape; he’s trapped by the warding on the house and has to walk in and out like a mortal would. He’s not fast enough to get past Hermes, and the positioning of the devil’s trap limits his maneuverability since its power is too overwhelming for him to use what little he has. But there’s always the prophecy; he knows he won’t die here, now, since the prophecy hasn’t played itself out, but Asclepius and David? The prophecy only involves one of his children, and it isn’t the two who are present. He must find a way to protect them, too. “I found it while searching for my quiver.”

Hermes makes a thoughtful noise then slings the sword across the room, to the far side of the devil’s trap. The demon’s throws itself more violently against its prison as it passes through. “Useless, now.”

“Well,” Apollo says with a sigh, “I can’t argue that.”

Now Hermes turns his thoughtful look on Apollo. “Tell you what. You let me have your _numen_ without a fight, and I’ll let the brat go.” He nods back towards Asclepius. “No eating him. At least, not today.”

Apollos considers it for a brief second, only long enough to realize what is really happening. “You’re lying.”

Hermes smiles, bounces a little on his heels. “Yes, yes I am. As soon as I’m done with you, I’m going to rip his _numen_ and the soul of the kid he’s hiding in from his chest and eat them, too.” 

Apollo sighs in defeat. The only way out, it seems, is through.

“Run!” Apollo cries and lunges at Hermes. Hermes is startled by the sudden attack, which is the only reason why they both end up on the floor, scrabbling and wrestling like they used to, when it was all hunts and green meadows and Artemis’s irritation at their rough housing. But there’s a brutal edge to it, teeth and fists and fingers curled like claws, knees in sensitive places, grunting and panting and noises like growls from their throats as if they are mortal brothers, tussling over some perceived wrong.

Beyond their scuffle, he hears Asclepius cry out in David’s voice, but he doesn’t hear footsteps on the stairs, doesn’t feel the retreat of his son’s _numen_. Apollo can’t understand why he’s not fleeing, why he’s not taking the chance he’s given him to escape. The boy has never had a sense of self preservation, has never known how to humbly accept the command of his elders nor understood that lack of his own flesh makes him weaker than he believes.

“Asclepius, I said run!”

“Yes, nephew, run!” Hermes calls, mocking with breathless glee. 

The tussle suddenly goes Hermes’s way; his brother gets one arm between them, presses against Apollo’s throat, and flips him on his back. He’s strong, so strong, knees bracing Apollo’s hips, arm at his throat, eyes lit up gold and bright as if he’s just been fed a sacrifice. Apollo thrashes and bucks, tries to dislodge him, but it’s a futile effort, and his fool son didn’t even take the chance to escape.

“I’m going to finish off your children, brother,” Hermes says as he slams his fist through Apollo’s ribcage; Apollo screams in agony as Hermes fingers wiggle and scissor, searching for the core of his _numen_. “I’m especially looking forward to tasty little Ben, whom you dangled in front of me once just to win twenty dollars and prove you’d made a hero. Then I’ll start in on the minor gods, the ones living off of flesh and blood rather than worship, even the Roman ones. I hear Janus is still out there somewhere, and Vesta is in South Dakota preying on renewed virgins, if you can imagine. Then I will take Artemis and Athena and Dionysus, if I can get past the sweaty pile of bodies at his feet-

“Brother-“ Apollo begins, but Hermes’s fingers finally close around his _numen_ , and he chokes on his own screams. 

Hermes clenches his _numen_ tight and begins to pull. “Poseidon and his kingdom should be particularly tasty; I’ve always liked seafood. I may even experiment with the other pantheons, expand my palate. Eventually I’ll be strong enough to take Aries and Aphrodite.”

Apollo can feel his _numen_ tearing away from his pseudo flesh, ripped out of the brain and the muscles and liver and heart, and over Hermes shoulder, Asclepius-in-David enters his field of vision, eyes wide with fear and confusion.

“Hermes, Hermes please,” he begs with David’s voice like a small child, lost and pitiable. Poor David whose mortal father had died so early in his youth that he did not remember him, who had taken to Apollo’s own infrequent fathering like a plant takes to the sun. He had been brilliant and loving, and it had been his idea to approach the infertile couples that he could not help with his fertility treatments. Apollo had never intended such an awful fate for the boy, to be devoured so completely by his own brother. He cannot possibly understand why David would so willingly give up his soul.

And Asclepius, taking it. How he had failed the boy.

“Run,” he tries to say again, but only his lips move; his voice is being ripped away with his _numen_. 

The last thing he perceives with the eyes of his flesh is Hermes face, full of murderous glee, and Asclepius, raising the adamantine sword above his head.

Then last tendril of his _numen_ is torn free of his body.

Apollo is no longer in the flesh he had become dependent on since belief in a dead carpenter had begun stealing away his adherents. The loss of physical sensation is sudden and confusing; even the sensation of being compressed in the grip of his brother’s hand is unlike any pain he had ever felt in a fleshy body. But he can also sense those things he hadn’t been able to perceive in his flesh: the low, piercing drone of the demon throwing its atoms against its trap, the hum of his father’s element flowing through the wiring of the house, the agony of the human race suffering through its diseases and wounds, the swift turn of the earth, the future ticking out one measured second at a time, the ever bleeding souls of demons, the incomprehensible wavelengths of angels chattering, and what remains of his children, just ten now, their tiny flames of divinity shining out in the darkness.

For one brief second, he feels like a god again.

But the sharp pain of the adamantine sword through a shoulder occludes the rest of the universe; he hears the inhuman cry of pain, feels the decompressed freedom as his brother’s fingers release him, senses the probability of being consumed by Titan magic rapidly approaching zero.

For a moment he hovers, complete and free, a ball of pure energy and light. But his freedom ends abruptly. Without his flesh to anchor him, his _numen_ begins to unravel; the tendrils that once embedded him in flesh disintegrate, his core beginning to unwind, and he thinks, this isn’t how it is supposed to happen.

He thinks: the prophecy should be killing me.

He thinks: my oracles are never wrong.

And in the split second before he disintegrates completely, before the power of his _numen_ is absorbed back into the throbbing heartbeat of the universe: the curl of human fingers around his _numen_ , and Asclepius’s words murmured in his brother’s voice, “Don’t worry, Father. I’ll fix this.”

Then nothing for a very long time.


	14. Chapter 14

Dean comes to his feet, the memory of the burning house still hot on his skin. “Get out of him, you son of a bitch, or I’ll-“

“Do shut up,” Apollo snaps, scowling with Ben’s face. His gold eyes gleam eerily, and Dean hates this, hates seeing something else looking out of Ben’s eyes and being powerless to remove it. “Don’t you think that if I could escape Ben’s body, I would have done so already?”

Dean flexes his grip on the blade. “No. I really don’t.”

“Of course not.” Apollo sighs, Ben’s thin chest rising and falling under Dean’s shirt. “Well, before you go all alpha male on me and stab me in the face, please keep in mind that I am currently sharing space with Ben.”

“And it’s time for you to vacate.”

Apollo shakes his head. “It’s not that simple.”

Dean takes a menacing step towards him, making his threat as clear as possible. “Make it that simple.”

“This isn’t possession, Dean, not in the way you understand it. This is Titan magic. I can’t zoom in and out of him like a demon.”

“Then how do I get you out?”

“You don’t. Ben does.”

“How?”

“I’m working on it.”

Dean’s patience is running thin. “Work faster.”

The thing wearing Ben doesn’t reply. Instead he meets Dean’s eyes with equanimity, and they stare at one another a moment, like two alley cats defending their turf.

Dean breaks first. “I want to talk to Ben. I want to know he’s still in there.”

“You can’t. Ben is sleeping. I could wake him up to assure you of his continued existence, but I won’t. His soul needs the rest. If you need to talk, you’ll have to settle for me. We have things to discuss anyway.” 

“What things?”

“Pancakes.”

Dean blinks at the non sequitur. “Sorry?”

“I want pancakes.” Ben’s face crumples in alien confusion. “With butter and syrup? Does that sound right?” 

Dean stares. “You want pancakes.”

Another shrug. “Ben’s body is hungry. Pancakes are one of his favorites, I believe.” 

Of course Ben has to be possessed by something that wants _pancakes_. “I don’t have everything I need to make pancakes.”

“Peanut butter toast, then?” Apollo sounds hopeful. “That seems to be a second favorite.”

“Yeah. I can do that,” Dean says, then realizes that he’s negotiating food with the thing that is possessing Ben. He runs his hand over his face in frustration. This is just ridiculous, but Ben hadn’t eaten anything in the last two days, and if someone in his body has decided to eat, then Dean doesn’t really have any room to complain. “Come on, then.”

Apollo slides off the bed, the movement dragging the collar of Dean’s Styx shirt off Ben’s boney, pale shoulder, and winces as his bare feet hit the cold marble floor. He wobbles unsteadily, and Dean has to catch him before he topples over and breaks Ben.

“Be careful.” The bones of Ben’s shoulder are sharp and hard under his hand, his skin hot and papery-dry. “That’s my kid you’re wearing.”

“Believe me,” Apollo says, dry as the desert wind. “I am aware.” 

Behind him, Lisa shifts uneasily on the bed, the Henley she borrowed from Dean twisting around her waist. Her eyes are darting back and forth beneath her eyelids, and Dean watches, concerned, as her hands clench and her brow furrows. 

She’s starting to wake, and Dean doesn’t want her to see Ben like this. There’s a certain word for what Apollo did to her while wearing Dean’s DNA, and Dean knows she was thinking it by the length of time she stayed in the shower and the ruddiness of her skin when she finally emerged. He wants as little interaction between them as possible; as it is, he’s trying hard not to think about how fucked up it is that the thing that helped father Ben is now wearing him. He’s used to this variety of twisted, has spent his life fighting it, but Lisa, well, he’s brought enough twisted into her life as it is. He doesn’t want her to have to deal with more than she has to, not if he can help it.

Dean motions Apollo towards the door with the angel blade. “Go.”

“Don’t worry.” Apollo is watching her with those creepy gold eyes, Ben’s head cocked to the side as if he’s listening to a far off sound. “She won’t wake.”

“Go anyway.” Dean’s pokes Apollo in the shoulder with the tip of the blade to get him going, gentle though, mindful of Ben. “Now.”

Apollo gives Dean Ben’s most sullen, surly expression, but he goes without protest. Ben’s body jerks around like he’s a puppet in the hands of a very bad puppeteer, hands and arms twitching, feet stumbling over nothing, shoulders bumping into walls and doorframes. After the third time he bounces off a wall, Dean sticks the angel blade handle-first in his back pocket so he can follow behind with his hands out to catch him if he falls, just like he used to do when Sammy was one and learning to walk.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Dean asks, catching Apollo as he rebounds off the doorframe on his way into the kitchen and nearly takes himself down.

Apollo shrugs away from Dean. “I’m in a body half my size without full control.”

“Without full control?” Dean hovers behind him as Apollo walks Ben’s body into the kitchen and eases down at the table. “What does that mean?”

“As I explained, this isn’t possession. I’m not wearing Ben as a demon might, and I can’t take full control without accelerating the Titan magic.”

Dean gets what he’s saying. The more control Apollo takes, the less there is of Ben. And Apollo had been in full control when he drove Hermes away, moving smooth and quick in Ben’s body, letting loose those arrows with deadly precision. How much of Ben did he use, laying into Hermes like that?

“You did just fine taking full control earlier. How much damage did you do to him?”

Apollo rolls his eyes like Dean’s concerns are absurd; it’s disconcerting how much of Ben he sees when he does that. “I assure you, Dean. Ben is still alive. You’re going to have to take my word for now.”

Dean pulls the angel blade out of his back pocket. He itches to put it to use, but that won’t solve anything. “Your word.”

Apollo’s eyes flicker to the blade and back again. He doesn’t seem worried but he gets it, Dean’s threat. “Dean, he’s my son, too. I am as concerned for his survival as you are.”

Apollo seems sincere, but in his experience, monsters are damn good at faking. But right now? He’s right. There’s not much he can do other than feed Ben and trust Apollo. 

Always between a rock and a hard place for them. Always.

“Concerned my ass,” Dean mutters to himself and tosses the angel blade on the kitchen island. 

Dean turns away from the dead god possessing his kid’s body and sets to making peanut butter toast. He can feel Apollo’s metallic-gold eyes on him as he moves between the counter and the pantry and toaster, can feel his gaze boring into his soul, measuring out what he finds. Dean doesn’t like it, tries not to let it get to him; you had to have thick skin to be a hunter, had to be resilient against all the dark things the supernatural liked to drag out of you and bring to light. Still, when Dean sets a plate of peanut butter slathered toast in front of Apollo-in-Ben, made just the way Ben likes it, he shivers at those alien eyes shining out of Ben’s face and hopes Ben’s not getting any of Apollo’s insight into Dean’s soul.

“So the thought that is plaguing you,” Apollo says, pulling the plate closer, the corner of Ben’s mouth curled up in a slight smirk, “despite the fact that ultimately, it doesn’t matter as much as you thought it would, is whether Ben is actually your son or if it’s just an elaborate illusion.”

Dean crosses his arms. The supernatural psychoanalysis is coming right on cue; if the monsters can’t kill you the usual way, they will sure as hell try to psychoanalyze you to death. “You think so, huh?”

“I know so. It’s written all over your soul. No worries, Dean,” he says, lifting the toast and peering at it suspiciously. “Ben is your son. If you were to take a paternity test right now, you would clearly be the male genetic donor.” 

It really doesn’t matter to Dean. He’d be happy to be Ben’s dad even without the genetic connection, was willing to do it even before he knew for certain that Ben was his, but he’s still relieved. Ben’s life would have been a hell of a lot easier if he hadn’t been a Winchester, but Dean can’t help the possessive pride of knowing for certain that Ben is his son, even if he hadn’t actually been there at his conception. 

Apollo takes a bite of the toast, makes a sound of surprised pleasure. “This is quite tasty. Mortal food always tastes like molecules and air, but if this is what it tastes like to mortals? No wonder they fall prey so easily to gluttony.” He takes another enthusiastic bite of the toast, and if it weren’t for the metallic gold eyes, Dean wouldn’t have known it wasn’t Ben.

“How did you do it?” Dean says.

“Do what?” Apollo asks absently, distracted by the toast.

“Me, Lisa, Ben.”

“Oh, that.” He shrugs. “A little bit of DNA and an opportunity. When I found Lisa at her best friend’s wedding, I kept an eye on her and waited for her to cross paths with a male whose genetic profile would be acceptable. See, we can pass on the spark of life to children but, despite having bodies ourselves, not mortal flesh. Therefore I needed a suitable genetic donor for Ben. I was quite thrilled when she crossed paths with you.”

Apollo seems downright gleeful about that. It reminds him of the angel’s Winchester breeding program, and it makes his skin crawl. Maybe he’d take his turn with a long shower next.

“So when Lisa let you in-“

“I was, for all intents and purposes, a genetic clone of you. My power was far, far greater than it is now, and I was able to create a copy of your – what is the delicate terminology you so often use? – meat suit?”

“Like a shape shifter?” Dean says.

“They can only assume the outer appearance, but the principle is the same, yes.” Apollo takes another enthusiastic bite.

“But why? Why choose me and Lisa?”

Apollo chews for a moment, Ben’s brow scrunching up in thought. “Lisa has been touched by fate. She has a prophecy tied to her soul, one I very much desired as my own. And you, well, when the two of you met, I couldn’t pass up my opportunity to hijack the angels’ eugenics program. I mean to make and corrupt an archangel’s vessel with my divinity? Surely you can see why I couldn’t pass up that chance?”

Dean isn’t going to begrudge someone their chance to thumb their nose at the angels, but he doesn’t particularly care for Lisa and Ben’s role in that. And the prophecy? Well, he can only deal with one fucked up thing at a time. “What do you mean corrupt?”

“Eh, it sounds worse than it is,” Apollo says around a mouth full of peanut butter and toast. He pauses to chew a few more times then swallows. “Pagan divinity in a vessel is like itching powder to the angel. Not harmful but damned uncomfortable. Why else do you think the angels went through all the trouble of resurrecting your brother from his ashes?”

Dean’s heart grows cold. He had asked himself that question more than once, but he had always assumed Zachariah had never tried to convince Ben to say yes. “Zachariah went for Ben first?”

“Of course he did. Ben should have been a sure thing, but the pagan influence is rather apparent to an angel, so he backed off fairly quickly. And of course, Artemis and I were around to make sure he did so.”

And for some strange reason, that’s the thing that solidifies Dean’s belief in Ben’s paternity, more than anything else ever has, his near miss with the Apocalypse. It could have been Ben down there with Michael and Lucifer instead of Adam. It could have been Ben pulled into the Pit with Sam, it could have been Sam and Ben he’d had to choose between when he had convinced Death to pull one of them out.

“Shit,” he says, and pulls out the chair across from Apollo to sit. 

“It’s a big thing, isn’t it? Fatherhood.” Apollo sounds amused, but he isn’t mocking, he isn’t twisting the knife. “All that time convincing yourself that even if Ben were yours, you weren’t father material, and he was better off without you. But this, now? With Lisa’s confession and Ben’s near miss with Zachariah, you can’t deny it anymore. You’re his father, and it’s overwhelming.”

“But,” Apollo says, licking his fingers thoughtfully, “I should probably warn you, Ben is a Winchester through and through. You’re going to find that he will follow some of your patterns and fall prey to the same mechanisms of fate as you have. I tried to temper your familial faults best I could with Lisa’s calm and common sense, but if I took out everything thing that made a Winchester a Winchester, I might as well have chosen any of the surly and unsuitably violent alpha males she tended towards to father Ben.”

“What faults?” Dean shouldn’t engage. He knows he shouldn’t. Responding to the head shrinking only digs the hole a little deeper, but he has to know. If Apollo can give him some kind of insight into Ben, give him some nugget of information that can help him steer Ben away from whatever destructive attributes he inherited from his side of the family, Dean wants to hear it. Needs to hear it.

Apollo peers at Dean over the second piece of toast, then sets it down and crosses his arms on the table, leans towards Dean seriously. “You Winchesters are obstinate, recklessly self-sacrificial, secretive, obsessive, and you all have a tendency to unwise deal making of the most dangerous sort. But those are also strangely your greatest strengths. You’re quite the conundrums, you Winchesters.” Apollo shakes his head. “I find you all very frustrating. Even Ben.”

“Ben isn’t any of those things.” Dean might be a little bit in denial here, but Ben is like a light shining in the darkness, a little piece of him he could leave behind that would remain untouched by the nightmare that his life has been. He doesn’t like the idea that Ben might make the same mistakes as all of the Winchesters who came before him, doesn’t like hearing that the one good thing he could leave behind in this world could end up just as tainted as him.

For the first time, he gets why his father never told him and Sam about Adam.

Apollo smirks. “Ben is in this situation now because of exactly all of those things.” He raises Ben’s hands and begins ticking off each point on his fingers. “He made a deal with a supernatural entity, withheld information from you concerning the vampire and the succubus that nearly killed him and the sacrifice he made to Hermes for help, and stubbornly refused to tell you about any of it because he thought he was protecting you.”

“You left out obsessive.” 

Apollo smirked. “Have you ever seen the boy work his way through a package of trail mix?”

Yes, actually Dean had watched him work his way through a package of trail mix - everything sorted into separate piles and eaten piece by piece alphabetically – and the fit he would throw if the food on his plate touched, and the elaborate rules he had about sandwich making....

Dean throws up his hands in defeat. “Fine. I believe you. Ben is my kid. I believed it three years ago. Why are you trying so hard to convince me? You said yourself that it doesn’t bother me.”

“Because I am signing over the entirety of my paternal rights to you very soon, and saving Ben is reliant on your willingness claim him as your own.”

Dean eyes the dead god lodged in Ben’s chest. “What are you going to do? Because if you think you’re putting Ben in danger-“

Apollo rolls his eyes again. “Of course I’m putting Ben in danger. Don’t be stupid, Dean. There’s no other option at this point.”

“No, I’ll do it,” Dean says, desperate, ready to beg. Sell his soul. Anything. “Whatever you’ve got up your sleeve, don’t drag Ben into it.”

“Speaking of Winchester faults,” Apollo says with a sigh and a shake of his head. He pushes away the plate, leaving half a slice and a smattering of crumbs. “Dean, you’re not going to take my advice.”

“What advice?”

“You think you can single handedly protect everyone at the risk of your very soul. You think that just because you believe your life has so little value, others should too. So you have the arrogance to make choices for others because you believe their inability to find you as worthless as you do endangers them. And that arrogance, Dean, that hubris? That belief that you know better? It’s going to destroy you. It’s going to tear down everything you’ve fought for from its very foundations and it’s going to turn you into the very thing you’ve never wanted to be.”

Dean feels cold, all twisted up inside. “That’s not advice.” 

“No. That was my last prophecy. This is my advice: Ben’s most basic nature is to heal. Let him do his job.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Apollo smirks knowingly. “Oh, you’ll see. To have a child like Ben, to see him grow into his power? Well, I envy you for being the one who will live long enough to see what he will become.” He pushes away from the table, gets to Ben’s feet. “Now, you’re going to put your head down and take a short nap-“

Dean’s head is suddenly heavy, his eyes burning and dry with the need to sleep. “You sonova-“

“-and when you wake up, Ben will be yours and yours alone. Just be sure that when you’re asked, you put aside all of that excruciating self-doubt and lay claim to him. It’s essential to your survival, Dean.”

Dean pushes away from the table, gets to his feet. “No, whatever you’re going to do-“

“Oh, for pity’s sake,” he hears Ben say, though, right, not Ben, and the next thing he knows, he’s being guided back into the chair. “Go to sleep, Dean.”

“Don’t,” Dean says, Dean pleads, but Apollo doesn’t respond, doesn’t engage, and Dean can’t do anything other than put his head down on the table and let himself be tugged down into darkness.

The last thing he hears is the whisper of Apollo padding away on Ben’s bare feet, stealing away his son.

* * *

Ben comes to knowing things.

He knows where he can find every hospital, clinic, and medical research facility planet wide. He knows how to cure AIDS, cancer, and the common cold. He knows the causes of autism and the genetic key to creating a viable human clone. He knows how Apollo pulled off the two dads thing. He knows there’s a research lab out west mucking about with the genetic research gathered by Dick Roman Enterprises, and that the CDC still has living samples of the Croatoan virus.

Neither bodes well for anyone.

Ben also knows the names of every sibling he's ever had in the past three millennia, and among them are names like Hendrix and Bach, Hippocrates and Lister. He knows the names of all of his currently living siblings - only eight now. One is a certain, world famous pop star who suppresses her prophetic dreams with alcohol and prescription drugs. There’s also a record executive in Seattle, a researcher at the CDC in Atlanta, a medic stationed in Afghanistan, a geneticist in Wyoming, and a midwife in San Antonio. Ben’s oldest living sibling is the Sibyl, and she hasn’t been too happy about that since Apollo popped into her kitchen one miserable afternoon after Hermes had killed the last Oracle and put the gift of prophecy in her mouth. The last is currently housing Asclepius’s _numen_ , his soul slowly being eaten away by Titan magic.

Ben will be down to seven siblings, soon.

He knows that Hermes eyes gleam golden because his divinity and power have almost been resuscitated to their pre-Christian glory. He knows that Apollo’s eyes are gleaming gold in the exact same way, and if Apollo stays in Ben much longer, he too will be on the path to his pre-Christian power.

Ben also knows that out of all the people currently inhabiting his body, only one of them is dying, and it's not Apollo. 

"You lied to me,” Ben says with his own voice. That sick punch-in-the-gut feeling of betrayal slams into him again. First Dean, now Apollo. He has an abundance of fathers, yet he can trust neither. “You said we are both dying. But we aren't. It's just me."

Apollo is slowly but steadily working his way up the staircase to the door, one laborious step at a time. He has dressed in Ben’s clothes, found freshly laundered again on Dean’s dresser. He has put on Ben’s Chucks and hoodie, has even taken a proper shower at some point. The adults are all asleep – his mom in Dean’s room, Dean in the kitchen, and Sam in the library, a nineteenth century tome on non-demonic possessions as his pillow. They need to be out of the way for now; timing is everything.

"Yes. I'm sorry,” Apollo replies, also with Ben’s voice. “I didn't want to alarm you."

"So you're just going to let this happen to me?" Ben sounds pathetic and desperate to his own ears and hates himself. If he’s going to die, he’d like to be a man about it. Instead he’s whining at his murderer. “You said you could help me.”

He feels a spark of frustration from Apollo. The Titan magic has progressed so far that they are beginning to overlap, thoughts and feelings and knowledge leaking through the membranes of their souls. The process wouldn’t be so far along now had Apollo not come to the forefront and used so much of Ben’s soul to power his attack on Hermes, but if he hadn’t, after Artemis died, Ben and Apollo, and probably Dean and Sam, would have been next. It was a calculated risk, but Apollo feels it has been worth it. Things are about to end, one way or another.

Apollo heaves himself up the final step, relieved to be at the top. Ben’s body is failing slowly but surely as Ben’s soul is drained from every cell. It makes his body heavy and sluggish, and since Apollo hasn’t pushed forward completely to take total control of his stolen real estate, it’s hard and exhausting to manipulate what amounts to dead weight. And now that Ben has woken and is casting aspersions, he has the added annoyance of an angry teenager buzzing under his skin. As if Apollo actually wants to kill the child he voluntarily took a death sentence to have. As if he wants to be a feast for his baby brother or would ever want that for his children.

It’s so very annoying. Ben is such a Winchester.

Apollo sighs in exasperation and shuffles towards the door. “A better question would be are you just going to let this happen to you?"

Ben hunches his shoulders and scowls. "What do you mean by that?" 

"Consider it for a little while.” Apollo pushes his way through Ben’s sullen body language to open the inner door then wrestles with the complicated crossbar mechanism locking the outer. “You will come up with a suitable answer eventually or you'll die. Now be quiet. I have business to attend to."

Apollo heaves open the heavy outer door with all of Ben’s body weight, letting a flood of warm afternoon sunlight spill over him. The sun is on the verge of setting, its aged orange light casting the shadows of the trees and the Impala in long, angular streaks. Artemis leans against the car, her long shadow falling into an indecipherable jumble with the others. She straightens as soon as she sees them.

“Well?” Apollo walks Ben’s body up the stairs to his sister, sweating with the effort of it. “Did you find it?”

“I did. The road narrows around that bend and becomes an overgrown walking trail.” She gestures towards the setting sun. “It dead ends at a wheat field.”

Apollo looks off in that direction, shielding Ben’s eyes from the sun with one hand. “Ah, wild nature butting up against agriculture at sunset. That should call out to him nicely.”

Artemis doesn’t take her eyes off her brother. “Apollo, is this confrontation necessary?”

Apollo looks up at her. It’s strange; he is unaccustomed to being so much shorter. “Can you think of a better way?”

Artemis huffs in exasperation. “Of course. I could-”

Apollo is quick to cut her off. “You can’t. You tried.”

“Then you could-“

Apollo shakes his head. “Not without killing Ben.”

Another huff of exasperation, this time accompanied by an annoyed eye roll. It reminds Ben of Aunt Sarah when Mom gives her unsolicited advice. “Brother, just tell me what you’re going to do.”

“I’m going to put him on trial.” 

Artemis seems confused. “Trial? How—“ Her eyes go wide, and Ben knows whatever kind of trial Apollo is planning, it’s bad news. “Wait, no. That’s madness.”

Apollo just shrugs; Ben can feel his firm resolve, his decision long made. “Perhaps, but it’s the only way.”

“Apollo, I beg you-”

“No, sister. This is the only way.”

Artemis looks away, her lips pressed together, eyes closed like it’s too much to bear.

“Artemis,” Apollo says gently, distressed by her distress. “I could not kill him last night. I won’t be able to kill him tonight. Even if I let the Titan magic run its course, I still won’t be able to kill him. He’s taken other gods now, and I would have to do the same to even match-“

“Yes,” she suddenly snaps. “I know. Just shut up for a minute.”

She stalks a few feet away from them, turns her back. Apollo watches silently, pained that he is hurting her, forcing her to be an accomplice in his death, but he can’t do it without her. He needs her, always has, the moon to his sun.

“You’ll need Athena,” she says after a moment.

“Yes.” 

She turns around, hand on her hips. “I suppose you’ll need me to convince her of it.”

“Yes.”

Artemis stalks back to them, glowering. “She wouldn’t even see me when I went to her before.”

“A good portion of the east coast has been washed out to sea and Chicago is still burning in Kali’s inferno. She will see you this time.”

Yet another exasperated huff. “Fine. I’ll do it. When?”

“As soon as possible. And when you go, take Sam Winchester with you.”

Artemis nods. “I suppose I’ll have to, after the grandfather.”

What grandfather, Ben wonders, and what trial and why the need for Athena, who, if he remembers, is the goddess of wisdom and war and of turning girls into spiders? He is so hopelessly confused right now.

“Just don’t let him piss off Athena.”

Artemis smiles, her eyes going soft. “I think the bigger concern is how much I might piss her off.”

“Don’t do that either,” Apollo says with an answering smile, though underneath is a horrific surge of grief. This is it. The end. They’ve been inseparable since they were born, spent the majority of their time in one another’s pocket, and always hurried back to one another when they were apart. Now they are never going to see each other again, and it’s the hardest thing they can do. 

Artemis reaches out, cups Ben’s face in one hand, but she isn’t seeing Ben. “Please reconsider.”

Apollo takes her hand in his, kisses her fingertips, and Ben wishes he could be anywhere else than here, feeling Apollo’s grief, witnessing Artemis’s pain. 

“You know I can’t.” Slowly, very purposefully, Apollo drops her hand and steps away. “I accepted the prophecy, and my Oracles were never wrong. I am choosing my own fate, and that’s more than I can say for the other gods.”

Tears begin to spill down her face. “Brother.”

“I know.” The sight of her tears twists in his heart. She has never been one to cry; she reacts to pain with the edge of her blade and the gnashing of teeth, not womanly tears, despite what some of the ancient writers have said. “Believe me I know. “

She looks away. “Go then. Make it worth it.”

“I plan to.” Apollo turns and starts the slow trek towards the place Artemis has found, the liminal place beyond the woods, whatever that means. At the bend where the road narrows, Apollo stops, turns. Artemis is still standing beside the Impala, watching them go with tears streaming down her face. Ben feels his own eyes grow wet, and he’s not entirely sure who the tears belong to.

Apollo raises his hand to Artemis, and she raises hers in return. Apollo pauses long enough to drink her in, to remind himself of why he is doing this. Ben can feel the sheer force of will it takes for Apollo to turn away first, to put his back to her and walk around the bend until he loses sight of her.

Apollo’s grief is so sharp, so powerful that Ben feels a little guilty for wanting to live.

“None of that, now,” Apollo says in Ben’s own voice. “Just remember this sacrifice when the time comes. Make our losses worth it.”

“Why? What’s going to happen?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you’re the god of prophecy. Aren’t you supposed to know these things?”

Apollo sighs, and it’s part frustration, part sorrow. “Ben, you’ve already begun to discover this, but all of your personal gods will fail you eventually, even those of us who are literally divine.”

“Yeah,” Ben says as Apollo steadily puts Ben’s feet one in front of the other, moving them towards whatever horrible fate awaits them, “I’m starting to get that.”

They say nothing else for a while.

* * *

Ben is gone.

The knowledge comes the moment Lisa opens her eyes and feels his weight absent from the bed. The blankets are messily tossed across her legs, and the sheets next to her are cold. The chair Dean had insisted on keeping watch in is empty, and Dean is gone, too.

Lisa’s first instinct is to panic, but she pushes it down, away. Ben’s probably with Dean somewhere in this magical hidden bunker the Winchesters have set up house in, no reason to lose her shit. She’ll just get up and find them. No big deal.

She takes a deep breath. Yeah, no big deal.

Lisa throws off the blankets and peels herself out of bed. She raids Dean’s dresser for socks and a flannel shirt, pulls her tennis shoes back on, buttons up the flannel over the Henley she had appropriated the night before, chasing off most of the chill.

The hallways are bright and eerily quiet, no sounds of movement or the hum of machinery, no murmur of voices in a further room. She stops by the bathrooms first, refusing to let the piercing, rabid panic in her chest to run the show. She pees and splashes water on her face, rinses her mouth with the mouthwash she finds on the little metal shelf over the sink. As she’s combing her fingers through her sleep-mussed hair, she sees herself, really sees herself, for the first time in almost two years. She looks damn good for thirty-six, but the dark smudges under her eyes and the lines around her mouth hadn’t been there the morning before, but then, neither had her memories or her awareness of Ben’s current predicament.

Heart pounding, a shiver of fear and disgust crawling over her skin, she turns away from the mirror, unable to bear the sight of herself. She had been a fool for ever believing that the words of the blind woman at the county fair were just the ravings of a crazy old lady swindling people with palm readings and false futures.

She needs to find Ben.

Back out in the hallway, the Bunker is still silent. Her footsteps echo eerily as she heads towards the kitchen; she feels isolated and alone, abandoned to the chill and deep silence of this mausoleum of dead magicians. The kitchen itself is bright and meticulously clean except for a plate of half eaten peanut butter toast on the kitchen table, Ben’s go to when he can’t con a full breakfast spread out of the nearest functional adult. To her great relief, Dean himself is asleep next to the toast, his head resting on his folded arms like a five-year-old at naptime.

But no Ben.

Panic claws at her again.

“Dean,” she says from the doorway, but he doesn’t respond. She moves closer but does not dare touch him; she remembers how violently he could react if he was startled out of sleep. “Dean!” 

He still doesn’t wake, so she gives him a shake, quick and gentle, and hops back, hoping he doesn’t come up swinging. His eyes snap open, and he jerks himself into an upright position so quickly that Lisa jumps back with a startled cry, but thankfully, he doesn’t lash out. 

Dean stares at her blankly, licks his lips. 

“Lis?” he says, like he’s the one who lost his memories. 

Panic kicks it up another notch; she has never once seen Dean not wake up fully alert, even when he was washing down a few Xanax a day with a fifth of Jack. “Where’s Ben, Dean?”

He blinks at her, rubs a hand over his face. “Ben?”

“Yes,” she says sharply. “ _Ben_.”

The moment he fully wakes is obvious; his eyes go wide, and he comes to his feet so fast the chair topples backwards with a clatter. 

“Ben. Shit.” He rubs his hand over his face. “I gotta go get him.”

Then he’s past her, out of the kitchen, calling for Sam.

Lisa hurries after him, panic is screaming and howling and ripping her to shreds.

“What’s happening?” she asks as she follows him through incomprehensible hallways, only a few steps behind. “Dean!”

He ignores her, his boots clomping up the steps into the common area of the bunker. Sam is there, slumped over one of the books and dead to the world, his hair splayed out across the yellowing pages of a huge tome.

“Sam,” Dean says, and when he doesn’t wake, Dean gives him a violent shake. Unlike Dean, Sam does come up swinging, but Dean deflects his punch easily, like he knew it was coming. Dean catches Sam by the wrist. “Sammy.”

Sam blinks up at Dean with a dazed expression. “Dean, what-“

Dean drops his arm. “Ben’s gone.”

Sam blinks half a dozen times. “But he was just here just a minute ago, asking me- shit.” Sam runs his hands through his hair. “Not Ben?”

“Not Ben. Come on.” Dean grabs a knife from the table, long and shining unlike any metal Lisa has ever seen, and heads up the stairs. Sam is up and grabbing his jacket from the back of his chair, hot on Dean’s heels, not bothering to question, just following his brother.

Lisa is right behind them, anger at being ignored overriding her panic. As soon as they hit the walkway, she is around Sam’s bulk and grabbing Dean’s arm, hauling him back.

“Dean, fucking talk to me.”

Dean lets her pull him around, the muscles of his arm tense under her hand. His expression is hard and impenetrable, like it had been when Artemis stole his voice. “Apollo took him.”

“Took him where?” The urge to scream is welling up again, and it takes everything she has to keep it inside. 

“Somewhere close by, I think. He wants me to show up.”

“Why?” Sam asks behind her.

Dean looks at his brother over her shoulder. “I don’t know exactly. He has some kind of plan to deal with Hermes.” His eyes dart back to her. “I’m gonna get him back, Lis. I promise.”

His words have the weight of a sacred vow behind them, and Lisa remembers his voice, coming through the darkness, pulling out the demon possessing her one sharp, miasmic barb at a time. 

“I know you will,” she says, because she believes him, believes he can pull out the thing possessing her son the same way he pulled the demon out of her. “But I’m going with you.”

Against her expectations, Dean doesn’t argue, just nods once, sharp and tight. 

“Dean-“ Sam says, his tone of voice promising a protest, but Dean cuts him off.

“Not now, Sam,” Dean says, turning back towards the door. 

Sam huffs in irritation, but he says nothing else as they follow Dean out into the cold spring evening.

The world is at that twilight place where the sun has disappeared over the horizon but its light still lingers, fading to gray. Shadows are long and deep, and stars are beginning to prick the sky. 

Artemis is leaning against the Impala, arm crossed, waiting for them.

Dean approaches her fearlessly, raises his long, shiny knife, the threat clear. “Where is he?”

Artemis doesn’t balk, though her eyes flicker to Sam, moving around to Dean’s other side, blocking her in. “That way.” She points west. “There’s a foot path-”

“I know it. You here to help us or to stop us?” 

“I’m here to help.”

“How?”

Artemis’s hand snakes out, quick and sharp, lands on Sam’s shoulder. “Like this,” she says, and then they’re gone, Artemis and Sam, just blinked out of existence between one heartbeat and the next.

Lisa stares at the place where they had been in surprise. Dean turns around in a circle, eyes sweeping the area like he might find them somewhere behind him.

“Sam!” he shouts into the air, desperation twisting in his voice, and all that panic Lisa had under control only seconds ago unleashes within her.

“Dean!” Lisa grabs his arm, forces him to stop. She remembers Dean before he knew Sam was alive, she remembers the nightmares and the drinking and the bottle of Xanax he let her grind up in the garbage disposal. She remembers how hollow his gaze seemed sometimes, like he had looked into the abyss and found it looking back, but after a while he seemed to get better, seemed to be on the verge of living again. She thought she and Ben would be enough for him, would be able to make him happy, eventually, but then Sam came back and Dean had lit up, showing her exactly what he looked like fully alive. And that was that; though she pretended otherwise for a while, she had known without a doubt that any hold on Dean she and Ben might have had was given over wholesale to Sam. They’d never be enough for Dean, not with Sam walking the earth.

A few minutes ago, she had believed that Dean would bring Ben back to her, just as he promised, but Sam had been there. Here, now, with Sam stolen away, she’s afraid she’s about to see him break that promise.

Dean’s eyes track back to her.

“Dean, please, _Ben_.” She knows she’s begging, knows she’s nearly hysterical right now, but she doesn’t care. Ben is all she has, he’s the only thing she has ever had, and she isn’t sure what she will do if Sam’s disappearance distracts Dean from saving him. 

Dean stares at her, absently rubbing at his jaw with the back of his free hand, still holding the strange blade. 

“Yeah, I know, Lisa,” he says gently, like he knows exactly what she’s thinking. “We’re going to go get him right now like I promised. Okay?”

Lisa swallows back her tears, barely reigning in her hysteria. “Okay.”

“Come on,” Deans says. He pulls away from her and starts off at a run, and Lisa follows, heart pounding away in her chest.

* * *

“Take me back,” Sam demands the moment he realizes that they aren’t in Kansas anymore.

Artemis ignores him, already on the move. The sharp report of her boots echoes through the outdoor corridor she has dropped them into. 

“Hey!” he calls after her, but she ignores him. Furious, panic buzzing sharp and thorny under his skin, Sam hurries after her, catching up with a few long strides.

“I said, take me back.” His mind keeps circling on Ben, wondering where Apollo has taken him, if Dean can handle it or if Artemis has handicapped Dean by taking Sam. Ben can’t die, can’t be utterly consumed by the Titan magic, he’s got to get back and help Dean save Ben. He has to go back _now_.

“No.” Her hair shimmers as she passes beneath the recessed lighting of the roof. “You would have died had you followed Dean and Lisa." 

"Yeah, and why's that?"

Artemis huffs. “Now isn’t the time Sam.”

Sam darts in front of her, puts himself in her path. Artemis draws up short, hand twitching as if she is considering drawing one of her hidden weapons. 

“Now is exactly the time.” He is seriously considering pulling out his own weapon and forcing her to take him back. “I need to get back to Dean and Ben.”

“Calm down. I’ll return you soon.”

Her dismissal is like a spark to the kindling of his panic. 

“Calm down?” His shout echoes up and down the colonnade, and suddenly he does have the blade in his hand, raised threateningly but not quite at her throat. “You’ve whisked me off to who knows where, while your brother has snuck off with Ben-“

Artemis sighs and flicks her wrist, and Sam is immediately pinned against the wall by the force of her will, the angel blade hitting the ground with an echoing clatter.

She steps up close to him, close enough that he can feel the heat of her body all along his. “Calm down and think, Sam. This irrational panic you’re feeling? It’s the compulsion of Ben’s blood spell. He’s in serious danger and the blood spell is working overtime to make you protect him. But if you will just think through it, the compulsion will ease and clarity will return.”

“Blood spell?” There’s a shooting pain behind his eyes, and Sam winces as he tries to focus. “I was right about the blood spell?”

“Yes. Apollo always likes to have a bit of insurance against the pride of overcompensating Greek kings and trigger happy Winchesters where the children are concerned.” 

“Dean would never have hurt Ben,” Sam says, thinking of Emma, how hard Dean had tried to talk her out of the imperatives of her nature and failing, almost at the cost of his own life.

“Dean wasn’t the Winchester Apollo was concerned with.” Artemis tilts her head, eyeing him thoughtfully. “Feeling better?”

Sam can feel himself coming down from his frantic panic, his rage diminishing even if the piercing pain behind his eyes isn’t. This must be how Dean had felt when he was trying to think past the blood spell a few days ago. “Yeah. You can let me go.”

Artemis waves her hand and backs away; the pressure of her will evaporates and Sam stumbles away from the wall. He scoops up the angel blade, and in a show of trust, he slips it back into his jacket. Thing is, he believes her when she says she’s on their side. 

Artemis doesn’t notice; she’s already moving, boots echoing down the corridor again.

Sam hurries to catch up, taking in his surroundings now that he’s in his right mind again. It’s long past sunset here, and colder, too, the air sharp and damp. The colonnade is bordered with precisely planted flowerbeds, just now budding with spring flowers, and a well-manicured green lawn rolls out into the darkness. In the distance he can see the lights of a large city, can hear the roar of traffic and the wail of sirens and the honk of horns.

Then, through the trees, he catches sight of the Washington Monument.

“What are we doing in DC?”

“Having a word with my sister.” They’ve come to a door, and Artemis stops, one hand on the knob. “When we enter, please, try not to brandish any weapons. I’m not strong enough to take on the entire Secret Service right now.”

Sam eyes her suspiciously. “Where are we exactly?”

Artemis sighs wearily. “Just behave,” she says and pushes through the door. 

Sam follows her cautiously, wondering where they could possibly be that pissing off the Secret Service is a serious concern, and as soon as he’s over the threshold, he knows. 

Sam stops dead and stares. 

They’ve walked into an oval-shaped room where half a dozen men in expensive suits are clustered around a desk. The seal of the United States is on the rug, and there is an abrupt and startled silence in the air. All eyes are on them; they have obviously just interrupted a power meeting of some kind, judging by the number of layers the suits are wearing and the very familiar man sitting behind the desk.

The man scowls. “Is there’s something I can help you with?” says the President of the United States, and even with the life Sam leads - heaven and hell, Lucifer and leviathan, gods and fairies and alternate universes where he and Dean are actors and Sam’s married to fake Ruby, turns out, there are a few things left in the world to shock him.

“That’s, uh, the President,” Sam hears himself say like a complete idiot, but no one’s really paying attention to him. Which is fine, because this is the Oval Office, and that’s the president, and Sam’s not really sure what he should be doing at this point. But there don’t seem to be any Secret Service here, so that’s good at least.

“Are you kidding me?” a woman’s voice says, emerging from the crowd of suits. The men part, and a slender blonde appears, suited up in a gray pencil skirt and heels that might be more dangerous than his angel blade. She seems really familiar, but Sam can’t quite place her.

“Athena? What’s going on?” the President asks.

“I’m sorry about this, sir,” the woman, Athena – shit, _Athena_? – replies. “My sister has poor timing and a great deal of stupidity.”

“Hermes is alive,” Artemis says. 

Athena eyes her with hostility. “We’re really doing this?”

“Yes.”

Athena sighs and turns to the President. “Sir, I need the room.” It sounds like a request on the surface, but underneath Sam is fairly certain there is a steely command.

“Of course. Take as long as you need.” The president stands and buttons his blazer. “Gentlemen, let’s take a short break.”

And then the President of the United States, commander in chief of the armed forces and leader of the free world, leads his group of advisors through a door on the opposite side of the room and cedes the Oval Office to Sam and a couple of hostile Greek goddesses.

Athena crosses her arms and levels a flat, icy stare at her sister. “You have two minutes.”

Artemis starts talking.

* * *

Ben hears the crows before he sees them.

There are a lot of them, cawing and chattering as they approach the end of the foot path, hundreds of them it sounds like. Ben shivers; he remembers the cyclone of crows in Georgia, dive bombing the Impala as they tore out of the dilapidated gas station’s drive. He had been sure they had wanted to kill him, and of all the ways he thought he might die today, being pecked to death by a bunch of angry crows isn’t one of them.

“Be calm,” Apollo says, stepping carefully over a rotted log and pushing aside a low hanging branch. “They aren’t going to pull that again. They were just overly excited because I had just regained consciousness inside of you.”

“Then why are they here?” 

“To cheer on Hermes, I’d imagine. They’ve been spying for him since this whole business started.” 

They are close enough now that they can see glimpses of the field peeking through the trees; little black bodies are moving around out there beyond the woods. “Why?”

Apollo shrugs. “They've had it out for me since I turned their feathers black.” 

“Why’d you do that?”

Ben can feel Apollo’s exasperation with his questions. “Because they’re tattletales, and I have a temper. Should you survive, read your Ovid.” 

He pushes aside one last overhanging branch, and steps into a narrow swath of open space between the tree line and an undulating sea of yellow-gold wheat. The sun is beginning to sink into the horizon, slipping slowly over the edge of the earth, and the world is draining of color, dissolving into gray shadow.

The cawing falls silent.

Hundreds of crows, feathers gleaming oily-black in the diminishing sunlight, perch on the barbed wire fence corralling the wheat and even cling precariously to the slender, drooping stalks. Some have settled in the tree line and others hop along the fence, milling around like spectators during a sports intermission. They all watch Ben’s body moving along the fence with their beady black eyes, and Ben can almost feel their hostility. 

“Are you sure-“

“Yes.” Apollo eases them down on a dark block of rock half-buried in the ground. “They’re just here for the show.”

“They’re creepy.”

Apollo shrugs. “I suppose.” 

He draws an arrow from the quiver, and slumps forward, forearms resting on his knees. He twists the shaft of the arrow between his fingers absently, his thoughts quiet again. He’s mulling something over, but he’s keeping it hidden, and Ben only catches snatches of images, fragments of words: a temple, a sleeping man, a gray-eyed woman with a gleaming helmet and a screaming gorgon on her chest.

“Look at you, brother. Devouring your little hero, but not strong enough yet to control the vessel.” 

Apollo looks up slowly, unsurprised by the voice, though Ben starts and flinches in fear. Hermes is on the other side of the fence, one arm resting casually on a fence post. His eyes gleam gold, and there is a slight glow about him that has nothing to do with the dying sunlight. In his physical form he looks the same – the nametag is still missing, the mending job on his vest is still ragged, the smudge of ash is still on his cheek. But beyond his physical manifestation, Ben can see his true form – the tunic, the sandals and the hat with wings - but that ragged tear on his side is a wound, badly stitched together and steadily leaking gold ichor, the blood of the gods.

It’s the place where he tore away from Mercury’s murdered aspect.

Hermes smirks. “So much for vengeance, eh?”

“Oh, there will be vengeance.” Apollo gives his brother a crooked little half smile, an answer to Hermes’ challenge. Ben catches the snippet of a ritual behind the smile, a simple action and a collective name. Ben doesn’t get it. This is Apollo’s plan, his vengeance for the lives of his children, for the deaths of his family, for Hermes’ broken oath? Some kind of little ritual?

“Really?” Hermes says. “You don’t even have a bow. And you’re sitting on a blood dedicated boundary marker. You might as well be sitting on my altar.”

“You never did understand vengeance, did you?” Apollo is viciously amused; he’s proud; he’s tricked a trickster god, lured him into a trap he had not even considered. There is a twinge of regret; under different circumstances, he might have found a way to help Hermes as he had Asclepius all those years ago, when Zeus granted Asclepius godhood, but not the ability to assume his own physical form. Apollo consoles himself with the knowledge that Hermes, his baby brother and frequent partner in crime, the one he loved the most after Artemis, is long gone and never to return. 

This is an act of mercy as much as an act of vengeance; rabid dogs must be put down, and so must rabid gods.

Hermes shrugs. “Can’t say I’m much interested, no. I’m just hungry at this point, especially after you made a pin cushion of me.” 

Apollo hasn’t ceased twirling the arrow in his hand. Ben can’t see it, because Apollo is looking at Hermes, but he can feel the smooth metal shaft in his hand. The arrowhead is sharp down to a microscopic edge; it can penetrate any flesh, man, god, or creature. Only angels and the strongest of demons can resist the power of Apollo’s arrows, and though Apollo may not be planning on using the arrows, Ben would kind of like a backup plan. 

Apollo isn’t completely controlling Ben, isn’t preventing him from moving his body or speaking with his mouth, so Ben thinks hard about moving his hands, forces the absent fiddling to stop. He slides his hand down the shaft to the arrowhead, but he can’t see what he’s doing, is operating on touch alone, so to his great surprise and Apollo’s, when his thumb hits the sharp point of the arrowhead, the arrow sinks into his flesh and down to the bone.

Apollo starts in surprise at the sting, looks down at his hand with a frown. Blood is welling up in the cut, flowing out and down and dripping onto the earth between his feet. Ben gets a surge of surprise from him; the blood flowing from the cut is red, but thin ribbons of gold thread through it. Ben is struck by how much it looks like the paint they used to use for art projects at school-

Ben’s thoughts jerk to a stop, the vision of red and gold paint spilling over his hands rises in his mind’s eye. 

Not paint in his vision. 

Blood. 

His blood and Apollo’s ichor, mingled together.

And like that, he knows what to do.

Apollo understands his intentions half a second before he does it. 

“No, wait,” he says, but Ben doesn’t wait or flinch or hesitate. This is his only chance. He moves fast with a hardness he didn’t know he had and flips the arrow, presses the point against his abdomen and thrusts upward.

His aim is perfect, flawless; the arrow slides in easily, glides through layers of skin, fat, and muscle like a hot knife through butter, pierces his diaphragm, slices up and through and into his thoracic cavity just behind his rib cage.

The pain is immediate and intense. Ben hears himself cry out, hears Apollo’s cry buried in his own, but he keeps pressing, aiming for the golden _numen_ he can see in his mind’s eye, wrapped around his own silvery human soul and sucking it dry. He pushes the arrow through Apollo’s _numen_ , into the light and glory of it, doesn’t stop until it passes through, punctures the core of his divinity, and pops it like a balloon.

The point stops a hair’s breadth away from his heart.

Red and gold blood, thick and bright like children’s tempura paint, spills over his hands. Apollo’s thoughts go quiet, then still, then stop completely. Apollo’s half-healed _numen_ bursts from Ben, an explosion of light and heat, a thousand times more intense than the light he had used to heal Sam. It flares brightly, almost but not quite as powerful as the gleam of an angel’s celestial form, and the world lights up in every direction like the noonday sun.

* * *

The flash of light takes Dean off guard.

It’s like in the movies, when you see the bomb from a distance, the bright flash of heat and light, signaling the end of the world; for one sliver of a moment, it’s daytime and summer, high noon when the sun’s at its brightest and most unforgiving, hot and strong. The veins of every leaf and blade of grass are visible, the rough tread of tree bark and the black shadows of branches; Lisa’s stricken and terrified expression; the blue of the sky in the middle of a black night.

Then it’s dark again, and Dean’s half blinded in the brambles.

“What was that?” Lisa’s voice trembles, but she’s keeping her cool, her hysteria another man’s calm. She’d been on the verge of a full blown panic attack a few minutes ago, but she’s a fucking trooper and pulled herself back from the edge faster than some hunters he’d known. She’s the love of his life if he’s ever had one, and he knows had Sam come back with his soul, they could have both easily settled down into civilian life with the Braedens and never looked back. But that’s not what the Winchesters get out of life; three generations going on four are proof of that.

Dean rubs his eyes, blinks into the shadowy afterimages drifting in his line of sight. “I don’t know.”

“Ben,” Lisa says, full of fear and dread, and that’s all she needs to say.

“Yeah,” Dean says, and tugs on her sleeve. His sight is trickling back, and he thinks he can make out the path between the trees. “Let’s go.”

* * *

Ben can’t see.

The light has blinded him, too bright, too powerful, and the afterimage of Hermes and the birds and the waving wheat field behind them floats in the darkness, silver against black and fading to gray. All around him he can hear the crackle of fire and the agonized cawing of burning birds and the flutter of many thousands of feathers erupting into the sky in a desperate bid to escape the heat. He hears Hermes cry out in denial, enraged at the murder, at the loss of power. He smells the burning of wheat and the char of feathers, the thick, suffocating scent of smoke.

He slides down the rock, his body limp and heavy, and drops hard onto the cold earth. He cries out at the jarring pain; his chest is throbbing with each beat of his heart, and he can feel his life trickling out of him, one red blood cell at a time. 

Ben covers the arrow wound with his hand; the shaft of the arrow between his fingers is slick with blood, the front of his hoodie is drenched in it. He shivers. It’s hard to breathe, and his hands are cold. He knows he’s going into shock, though he doesn’t know the big fancy medical term for it anymore. Only the rock at his back is keeping him upright, and odds are good that despite getting rid of Apollo, he’s going to die. That should probably worry him more than it does, but hey, at least he still has a soul.

“You,” Hermes says. Ben’s vision must be coming back; he thinks he can see a person shaped shadow looming over him, backlit by orangey brightness which must be the fire. “You rapacious, patricidal _thief_.”

“Takes one to know one,” Ben mumbles, blood dribbling down his chin. Shit. He’s punctured his left lung. 

“I can’t say I took pleasure in killing your siblings, but you, I will enjoy making you suffer-“

Ben zones it out, too woozy and lightheaded to keep up with Hermes’s rant, though he is disappointed that the bad guy rant isn’t just a movie thing. His eyes water as he blinks against another gust of smoke blowing in his face, swallows back another mouthful of blood. Man, the arrow protruding from his chest hurts. 

“-tear out your soul-“

Hermes is still going, and he’s kneeling in front of Ben now and Ben isn’t quite sure when that happened. One hand is on Ben’s throat, the other on his chest, and his fingers are curled and ready to dig into his flesh.

“-take your divinity-“

Snippets of Apollo’s thoughts and memories are bouncing around in his head, throwing out disjointed images and getting jumbled in Ben’s own muddled thoughts: Artemis striding across a field, letting loose a shower of arrows, a woman screaming out in agony as her skin becomes bark, the walls of a city toppling from its foundations, and that temple again, the gray-eyed woman, the sleeping man. 

And wings. Great, leathery wings.

Ben forces himself to focus on that, the wings, the temple, the words Apollo associated with them. The echoes of his mind are still strong enough for Ben to sort out what it was that Apollo was planning to do.

And yeah, it’s a pretty awesome plan; Ben’s sorry he doubted him, now.

Hermes’s fingers are starting to sink into his chest, and it’s hard, but Ben does it, carries through with the ritual.

Lifts his hand.

Knocks three times on the ground.

Says, “Erinyes, I summon you.”

Hermes freezes, his hand partially buried in Ben’s chest. “What are you doing?”

The words are emerging from Apollo’s memories, trickling easily from Ben’s lips along with another mouthful of blood. “I summon you to serve justice, Eumenides, blood in exchange for familial blood unjustly shed-“

“No,” Hermes eyes are huge, luminous with fear. He jerks his hand out of Ben’s chest, gets to his feet. “Don’t. They’ll kill you, too.”

“I summon you to serve justice.” He tries to remember the rest and can’t. Too much blood loss on top of his partially drained soul. He hopes this will be enough. “Kindly Ones, please, just come.”

Beneath them, the earth begins to tremble.

It’s early in the day, or what passes for day here, anyway, and Alastair is taking his sweet time. He has completely skinned Dean’s right arm, and now he’s making serious inroads on Dean’s left. Dean does his best to ignore the agony, distracting himself by staring into the fathomless dome of what passes for the sky. It’s pulsating and red-pink, something like the slimy wet flesh in the back of his throat in appearance, and it echoes constantly with the screams of the damned, tortured and twisted and torn apart on their racks. It’s as monotonous as it is disgusting, but today there are winged things up there, swooping over the pit, screaming out in eager joy. It’s not unknown, but it is rare enough that Dean doesn’t have to focus so hard on ignoring Alastair’s knife as he tries to catch a better glimpse of whatever these Hell-monsters are.

The distorted beak of Alastair’s twisted face suddenly appears in his line of vision, blocking his view. “Where are you today, Dean? Didn’t you notice that I just cut off your finger?”

Alastair follows his line of sight, notices the swooping things. 

“Ah, the Kindly Ones.” He rests one hand on Dean’s forehead, deceptively gentle. “I admit they are an interesting brood. Beautiful in their ability to torment, even though they lack any kind of grace and skill.” 

One sweeps low enough to see the blood seeping from her eyes, the snakes writhing over her black, rotting flesh. 

“Ah, but they are stirred up today, are they not? We must have gotten a fresh batch of parricides.” 

Another swoops low, and Dean sees that she is holding the bloodied, torn stump of an arm.

“But enough of bird watching, yes? I must be losing my touch, Dean, for you to find them more interesting than my knife.”

Alastair turns to his wall of torture implements, selects a meat hook, and tests the sharpness of the tip with a gleam in his eye. Dean shivers and braces himself, reminds himself he did this for Sammy, to save Sammy. 

“Now let’s see what kinds of interesting things I can do with this,” Alastair says, and bends over him again with an eager grin.

Dean begins to scream, and the swooping things in the sky are long forgotten.


	15. Chapter 15

There’s a lot going on when Dean finally stumbles onto the edge of the wheat field.

There’s Ben, propped against the huge chunk of black rock that Sam had decided was some kind of mystical boundary marker, an arrow protruding from his chest. There’s Hermes, right next to Ben and far too close, coming to his feet. There’s the perfect circle of decimation about thirty feet across all around them, and there’s the burning wheat and the billowing smoke, and the ground rumbling like an oncoming freight train. And at the furthest extent of the decimation, there’s the three huge mounds rising from the earth, distending then contracting, in and out, up and down, bulging like bubbles in a boiling pot and growing with each contraction. 

None of it looks good.

Dean pauses, anxiously adjusts his grip on the angel blade, tries to get a read on the situation before he goes running in. He’s not risking Ben on reckless heroics, not when he needs a second, just half a second, to figure out what to do next.

Then a claw pokes through the mound closest to Ben. 

A claw, swiftly followed by a wing that unfurls outward, bits of soil and charred wheat stalks raining from the fragile skin between its finger bones. The stench of fetid blood and rotting meat unfurls with it, rolling out in all directions in a wave of damp heat. It washes over Dean in a surge of sense-memory: Alistair’s blade cutting into his flesh, the screams and howls and laughter of the damned, the great winged things swooping in the sky. 

For one sliver of a second, Dean thinks he’s in Hell again.

But the sky is all wrong; it’s not the pinkish, throbbing sky of the Pit, but the crisp blue-black sky of the Kansas night, stars popping up one by one, a gibbous moon on the horizon.

Not Hell, then, but Hell is definitely coming up for a visit.

Another claw follows the wing, then an arm and a head with snarled hair and snakes slithering between the snarls. And they keep coming, these things; three of them, emerging out of the ground one wing at a time. Woman-shaped but huge, twice as large as a man; naked, skin the color of roofing tar, sagging, leathery, scaly. More wicked-black snakes slithering around their necks like jewelry, around their waists, between the fingers of their claws. Blood oozing from their eyes, teeth deadly sharp in their mouths, wings extending outwards and upwards, blocking out the stars.

Dean remembers these things; Alistair had admired their barbarism and blood thirst, though frowned on their lack of precision and control. He had called them the Kindly Ones, but that’s just a cute euphemism for what everyone else calls them.

He understands now why Artemis disappeared and took Sam with her.

From behind him comes the rustle of leaves and the snap of twigs as Lisa bursts into the clearing, snapping him out of his near flashback. She stops beside him and gasps, eyes wide. Dean knows what she’s going to do before she does it because she’s Lisa and she’s Ben’s mom, and he’d never expect anything less.

“Ben!” Lisa screams and runs right for him.

Dean calls after her, tries to catch her, but she evades his grasp, fear for Ben putting an extra burst of speed in her step. She sprints towards Ben and slides to her knees at his side, pulls him against her as if she has any power to protect him from things that literally belong in Hell. 

Dean’s got no choice now, not that he’d make another. He follows, drops to his knees right along-side her. Ben’s conscious, though he’s shivering violently and his eyes, his human, non-gold gleaming eyes, are glassy from shock. Blood soaks his clothing, blood and something else that flashes gold in the light of the fire, smears his mouth and chin. The arrow is shoved into Ben at an upward angle, which means that Ben probably did the shoving, and shit, just shit.

The Hell monsters are preoccupied with crawling out of the ground, and Hermes is nowhere to be seen. Maybe he’s done a runner, which would suit Dean just fine at this point, and the breeze is blowing the fire and smoke out to the west, pulling it away from them. Dean’s got a minute to assess, to figure out how bad things are before they move Ben, but probably not much more than that.

He jabs the angel blade into the ground point first, tugs Ben’s hand away from the wound. There’s not a huge gush of blood, which probably means the blood is gushing internally. Not good.

“Apollo?” Dean asks, though the silver arrow protruding from Ben’s stomach has already told him the answer. 

“Dead.” A thin tendril of blood trickles down Ben’s chin. “I killed him.”

“You did this to yourself?” Lisa’s voice is twisted with the same piercing fear and agony as every cell of Dean’s body. She smoothes Ben’s hair away from his face. “God, Ben. Why?”

“Had to, mom. No other way.” Ben licks the blood off of his lips. “But I’m okay, though. I promise.”

“The hell you are.” Dean grabs Lisa’s hand and puts it over the wound, forces himself to ignore Ben’s cry of pain at her touch. “Apply pressure, but hold it still. Too much moving can make it worse.”

Lisa’s eyes are wide, showing too much of the whites, and she’s breathing in panicked little pants, but she nods in understanding, still with him. Dean presses his fingers to the pulse of Ben’s neck. His skin is cool and clammy, and his pulse is too fast for Dean’s liking.

Dean shifts on the balls of his feet, gets into a better position to lift Ben. “I’m going to move you now, and it’s probably going to hurt like a bitch, okay? Lisa, let go as soon as I’ve got him and grab the angel blade. We’re going to make a run for it.”

Lisa nods, but Ben pushes weakly at Dean. “We can’t go. I have to make my case.” 

“The fuck you do. We’re going. Now.”

Against Ben’s protests that they have to stay, that this is the only way to kill Hermes now that he’s so powerful, Dean slides his arms under Ben’s knees and back. He’s tensing to lift him when Lisa makes a strangled sound of terror. Her eyes are fixed over Dean’s head, and she looks like she’s about three seconds away from passing out. 

Cautiously, Dean looks back over his shoulder and up into the three hideous faces of the Furies.

* * *

So, here are the huge, leathery wings, blocking out the stars.

Ben’s distantly aware of his mom, holding him in her arms and shaking in terror, and of Dean, easing his arms out from underneath Ben and picking up his weird shiny sword, but Ben really only has eyes for the things looming over them, their eyes demon-black and unblinking. 

“Tell us, little mortal,” the Furies say as one, the cacophony of their voices grating and harsh. “Why have you summoned us?” 

Ben should be scared. He should be a puddle of whimpering goo by now, just like with every other supernatural thing he’s seen ever, because these are the Furies, creature of relentless vengeance; a demon, a succubus, and a vampire are nothing compared to them. But instead, there’s this limitless feeling of power, like when he’s just hit the ball way into the outfield and he’s taking every base at full throttle, knowing that he’s going to make a homerun, that the ball isn’t going to get across the field in time, that he’s fucking got this and there’s no power in the ‘verse that can stop him.

“Hermes killed my brothers and sisters with Titan magic,” Ben says, Apollo’s ricocheting memories guiding his words. “I accuse him of familicide.”

The Furies rustle their wings in agitation, and beside him, Dean mutters, “Shut up, Ben.”

Ben ignores him; he’s got this. “He murdered his own nieces and nephews. And he did the same to Poseidon and his offspring.”

The Fury in the middle crouches, bringing her huge teeth and claws that much closer to Ben. “Hermes, you say?” 

“Yes.”

“Ben,” his mom says sharply then, “ _Please_.”

“A weighty charge,” says the Fury on the left. She snaps her wing out and back, out of the circle, and sweeps a very confused looking Hermes back in. He looks back over his shoulder like he’s not quite sure how he got here. “Be sure, little mortal, that this is the one you accuse of such heinous crimes.”

“Yes.” Ben points at him for good measure. “That’s him.”

The look Hermes gives him could melt metal, but when he turns to the Furies, his eyes are wide and innocent. “What charges, my most vengeful mistresses? I’ve been occupied with lost travelers at Paddington Station this evening, from where you have just now pulled me, and I’m afraid I have no idea what is going on.”

The Fury on the right leans in, takes a long, deep sniff of Hermes. 

Hermes steps back from her, an expression of offended disgust on his face. “Madam, please.”

“I know this one,” she says. “It’s the godling thief.”

The Fury on the left bends down to peer more closely at Hermes. He stumbles back from her a little. “Who?” 

“He filched the man who killed his mother,” the first replies. “Remember? All those years ago, when we still roamed the up above?”

The smarmiest, most ingratiating smile appears on Hermes’s face. “Yes, you are correct. I am Hermes. I do confess that I removed Orestes from the path of your justice, but that was at the command of my older brother, and besides, I believe the matter was settled to everyone’s satisfaction.”

“Yes, Hermes Dolios, we recall the outcome of that trial and your thieving ways.” The one in the middle comes to her feet, stretches her wings up and back before folding them again. Something in the action suggests irritation and impatience, like she’s about as impressed with Hermes’s smile as Ben is. “The little mortal has made an accusation of familicide, and he’s not wrong. I can smell their blood on your hands. What do you say to that, Hermes Dolios?”

“Yes, answer, Hermes Dolios,” the left Fury says, a gleam of murderous delight in her eyes. “Tell us of your nephews and nieces, swallowed whole.”

“And your father’s brother.” The right one shakes her head. “Shameful.”

“And his uncle’s family,” the middle Fury says. “Greedy little godling.”

“Greedy,” the other two echo in agreement.

Hermes tugs down the hem of his vest nervously. “Well, ladies, I would say that you should perhaps question the boy about the blood on his hands. He killed his father right before my eyes, and used Apollo’s own arrow to do it.” He gestures towards Ben. “Look, there’s Apollo’s ichor still literally on his hands. Isn’t patricide a more damnable crime than a few mortal nephews and nieces?”

The beasts turn their black, bleeding eyes towards Ben. “Is that true, boy?”

Mom tightens her arm on his shoulder. “Dean,” she says with a trembling voice.

Dean starts to get to his feet, but Ben grabs his arm, doesn’t let him move. He can’t let Dean get caught in the crossfire.

“It was self defense.” Ben’s stomach is sinking like a lead weight; he’s got a bad feeling about this. “I had to do it.”

“Dammit, Ben, shut up.” Dean hisses in warning.

“Self-defense?” the middle Fury says. She crouches again, digs her claws into the earth like she just can’t wait to dig them into something else. “You do not deny it, then?”

Ben almost lies, but figures if there’s anyone he shouldn’t lie to, it’s the Furies. And besides, everyone keeps telling him what a bad liar he is. “No. I would have died if I hadn’t.”

“No fan of Apollo, me,” the one on the left chimes in, “but blood of a father spilled is blood of a father spilled.”

The one in the middle nods. “I would agree sister. Paternal blood spilled must be avenged.”

Ben frowns. “No, wait-”

“No.” Dean lunges to his feet, throws himself in front of Ben, arms wide. “No. He’s mine. I’m his father. Not Apollo.”

“Oh?” the Fury in the middle says. She leans down, gives him a good sniff, and Dean’s face twists in disgust. “You do smell of father, but not enough of father. It is unclear.”

“I am his father. I..I claim him.” Dean’s voice is all thick and raspy, and there’s this tremble in it he’s never heard before. “The kid’s mine. Has my taste in cars and music and... and... burgers, and dammit, he’s _mine_.”

The Fury leans to the side, past Dean. “Is that true, little mortal? Do you agree with his claim?”

Ben nods fervently. His eyes are burning and his own voice is thick when he speaks. “Yeah. Dean’s my dad.”

She turns her black, bleeding eyes on his mom. “And you, mother? Do you support this claim?”

“God, yes.” Her voice comes out as a croak. “Dean is his father.”

“A claiming is a claiming,” says the Fury on the left. “Even one that is thirteen years late.”

“Agreed, sister,” says the one on the right. “What say you, Tisiphone?”

The middle Fury –Tisiphone – pushes Dean aside with one huge clawed hand and leans into Ben. Dean yells something with a lot of swear words in it, and his mom makes an inarticulate cry of terror, but Ben holds himself steady and braces himself, that feeling of power gone now that the literal embodiment of vengeance is hovering over him. A puff of her breath rolls over him, and it’s awful, hot and damp, smelling just like rotting meat and sewage, just like the succubus in the woods when Artemis killed her. She inhales, long and deep, her hideous face so close that Ben can see the beads of blood welling around her eyes, can see the scales climbing her cheeks and the blood red eyes of the snakes writhing in her hair.

Black eyes bore into him like she knows Apollo was his father as much as Dean and is waiting for Ben to break and start blubbering out a confession. Ben meets her eyes evenly, because he’s made his choice, Dean is his dad, and if Ben ever kills him, then she is more than welcome to come for him then. 

The stare off seems to last forever. Then she snaps her teeth once, right above his face, and withdraws. She comes to her full height and shakes out her wings. 

“This man’s claim holds true. The boy is his child and is not guilty of familicide.”

Dean is back at Ben’s side in an instant. “You okay?” he asks, one hand resting on the top of his head.

“Yeah. I’m fine.” Ben’s vaguely aware that his parents – his _parents_ – are fussing over him, and that Dean’s giving his mom instructions about making a run for it again, but Hermes is trying to sweet talk himself away from the Furies and Ben wants, no, _needs_ , to see what happens next. 

“Lovely, the matter’s settled, then,” Hermes says brightly. He claps his hands together, rubs them brusquely. “If the boy isn’t Apollo’s, then the children weren’t his brothers and sisters, and there is no complaint to be had. I will just be on my way.” 

“What?” Ben says, and his parents are hushing him, but he slaps their hands away. “No, he murdered his family. You are supposed to punish him for it!”

“Your worries are unfounded, little mortal.” The Fury on the left grabs Hermes’s shoulder, digs her claws in to hold him in place; Hermes grimaces in pain as gold ichor dribbles down his shirt front. The Fury gives him another sniff, long and deep. “Your complaint may no longer be valid, but he still reeks of family blood.” 

Hermes scoffs. “Only nieces and nephews, and barely that.”

“And Poseidon?” says Tisiphone. “How do you answer for your uncle’s murder?”

“Yes, how do you answer, brother?” says someone else, someone new.

A woman has suddenly joined the circle, completely out of place in her gray suit and high heels. Ben catches a glimpse of the real her, though, the helmet and the spear and the breast plate with a screaming gorgon, so maybe not that out of place, then.

The Furies rustle their wings in agitation.

“Areia,” says the Fury on the right.

“Tritogentia,” says the Fury on the left.

“Daughter of Zeus,” says Tisiphone, removing her finger from Hermes’ side and sucking off the gold ichor.

“And Basilea, now,” the woman says with no little pride. “I inherited my father’s kingdom and titles.”

“Athena, sister!” Hermes says with exuberant insincerity, even he twists in the grip of the Fury holding him, grimacing in pain as he tries to escape. “Tell these fine ladies that there is no injured party to level a complaint.”

The look Athena shoots Hermes says that if he were on fire, she wouldn’t pee on him to put him out.

“But here is someone to level the complaint, Hermes. Me.” She paces further into the circle, her heels sinking into the charred earth. “He slaughtered our uncle, our father’s brother. He devoured our nieces and nephews, our brother’s children, as if they were sacrifices on his altar. Family blood is family blood, honorable ladies, even when it is only the merest drop of ichor.”

“And the boy?” Tisiphone tilts her head, eyes Athena curiously. “He says the mortal man is his father, yet there is godly ichor bleeding from his wound and blackening on his clothing. What do you say to that?”

Athena looks at Ben for the first time, and his blood runs cold. It reminds him of the way all the things he had met had looked at him, hungry and malicious.

“The mortal has laid claim?” Her eyes flicker to Dean, briefly flashing gold. Her mouth twists with distaste. Ben sees Dean stiffen out of the corner of his eye; the shiny sword is in his hand again, and Ben really hopes he doesn’t start trying to stab people with it. “Well, who are we to deny the claiming?” 

She turns back to the Furies. “Hermes on the other hand, is guilty of his crimes. This time, ladies, I see no reason for a trial. The blood is on his hands.”

Tisiphone nods solemnly. “We accept your grievance, Athena.”

“Hermes Dolios spilled family blood,” says the Fury on the right.

“Hermes Dolios must die,” says the Fury on the left.

“Wait, no!” Hermes is begging now, eyes huge and soulful, even though they gleam and shine with his golden _numen_. “Athena, I am your brother.”

Athena nods. “Yes, you are, and I love you. But you’ve committed Kronos’s sin, and that cannot stand.”

“What! No, I’m a god at full power, you can’t-“ Hermes’ indignant rant is cut short as Tisiphone stabs her entire hand into his chest.

Gold light erupts from Hermes’ chest, brighter than the fire, brighter than the sun. Ben’s eyes water and he has to look away from the glory of it.

“Hell fuels our justice, these days, godling thief.” The Furies are speaking as one again, their tripled voice like nails down a chalkboard. “We no longer answer to Father Zeus nor Queen Athena nor any other earth bound divinity, and Hell does not recognize your power. Your hands drip with the blood of your family. It is our right to avenge.”

“Shut your eyes!” Ben cries, realizing what’s about to happen. Apollo had been on the road to restored power, and his death had only blinded Ben temporarily, but Hermes had nearly made it back to his full power, and his death would do a whole lot worse. 

Ben feels someone’s hands over his eyes, Dean’s probably, and he feels his mother’s forehead, pressed against his temple, and then there’s a horrific ripping sound, flesh tearing, bones popping from sockets, a cry of unimaginable pain as the Furies rip the god Hermes limb from limb.

There’s a flare of light, as bright as a supernova; he can see it through Dean’s hand and his own eyelids, can only imagine how Hermes’s death throes light up the world.

Then there’s darkness again and the roar of the fire and the sound of sloppy chewing and crunching bone. 

Dean’s hand lifts away, and Ben opens his eyes slowly, finds Athena standing over them, her face as empty and hard as a stone statue.

“If you would like your claim on Ben to stand, Dean Winchester,” she says with a voice that is so cold and dry that Ben isn’t sure whether he is shivering from hypovolemic shock or just the sound of her voice, “I recommend taking the boy to a hospital before he bleeds out.”

Dean licks his lips, his expression almost as cold and hard as hers, and lifts Ben without any warning.

Ben cries out, the pain of being moved rattling outward from his chest. Dean mutters his apologies even as he comes to his feet, then they’re moving quickly, not quite at a run, but almost.

“Mom?” Ben mumbles into Dean’s chest, suddenly panicking. He just got her back. He can’t lose her again.

“She’s right here,” Dean says. “She’s okay, kiddo.”

“I’m fine, baby. I’m here.”

Ben nods against Dean’s arm, relieved, and realizes he can’t feel his fingers or toes. The shock is really starting to dig in, now. He huddles closer to Dean’s warmth and clutches a handful of Dean’s flannel shirt in his numb hand, the movement causing relentless pain. He’s so cold again, so cold and scared, and he knows he may not live through this.

At the tree line, Dean has to turn to the side to get them past a low hanging tree limb, and for a brief moment, Ben can see the fire raging across the wheat field, swept westward by the wind, and Athena, a black silhouette against the fire as she watches them go, and the great, leathery wings of the Kindly Ones, rising into the night as they feed, blocking out the stars.

I did that, he thinks.

Then things go black for awhile.

The man in the red vest sits down first.

There are five blue chairs in the hallway, and Ben is sitting in the one closest to the nurses’s station so the grownups can keep an eye on him. He’s trying be a good boy and color in his _Lion King_ coloring book like Mommy asked, so when the man sits down at the other end of the row, Ben doesn’t pay him much attention.

But then the doctor sits down. 

“Hi, there, Ben,” he says, bright and cheerful. He stretches one arm across the back of Ben’s chair, and Ben tenses. “I’m Dr. Acestor.”

Ben looks up from Simba and frowns at the doctor. “How’d you know my name?”

The doctor smiles. His teeth are really white and the corners of his eyes crinkle when he smiles. “Oh, I know a lot of stuff about you.” 

Ben’s hunches his shoulders uncertainly. On the one hand, he knows he’s not supposed to talk to strangers. On the other, this stranger is a doctor and they’re at a hospital. Ben doesn’t know what to do, especially since this doctor seems to know him.

Ben glances towards his mom, standing on the far side of the nurses’s station, talking to Grandma’s doctor with Aunt Sarah. Aunt Sarah is crying, and Mommy is rubbing her back like she does to Ben when he is sad or scared. His tummy twists unpleasantly, and he looks away. He probably shouldn’t bother them right now.

He returns to carefully coloring in Simba’s body, hoping the doctor will just go away on his own, but he doesn’t.

“Whatcha coloring?” he asks.

Ben hesitates, because ignoring the doctor isn’t making him go away, and he’s not sure what to do next. Mommy says he’s not supposed to be rude, either, and not answering grownups when they ask a question is rude. 

“A lion,” he finally says, but he keeps his eyes on his coloring book, hoping the doctor will take a hint.

“Cool,” the doctor says, not taking the hint at all. “That’s Simba, right?” 

Ben nods. The man in the red vest laughs a little. The doctor doesn’t say anything, just watches him color. It’s sort of weird, and it makes Ben’s tummy twist even more. He wonders if he should go to his mom even though she’s not done talking to the doctor. He looks in her direction again. Aunt Sarah is crying loud and gross like a little kid now, and Mommy is still rubbing her back, even though tears are running down her face, too. Ben’s tummy feels really bad now, and he jerks his eyes back to Simba, keeps coloring him in careful, even strokes.

“So I hear your grandma is really sick,” the doctor says. 

Ben freezes, the yellow crayon stopping in mid stroke. 

“Hey, it’s okay, kiddo,” the doctor says gently and smoothes a hand over Ben’s head like Mommy would. “You can talk to me.”

A wave of warmth flows over Ben, and he’s not quite sure why he was so afraid to talk to the doctor a minute ago. He’s a doctor. They’re good guys. They help people. 

“Mommy says Grandma might go live with Grandpa in heaven, soon.” His bottom lip starts to tremble. “Everyone says that Heaven is a good place, but if that’s true, why is everyone so sad that she’s going there?” 

“I’m sorry to hear that, kiddo.” The doctor sounds sad. “People are always sad when people they love go to Heaven, even though it is a good place. But let me ask you something. Have you tried kissing her better?”

Ben shakes his head and starts coloring again, but he can’t seem to keep the yellow crayon inside the lines. His vision is kinda blurry. “I asked Mommy if she tried it, but she said that kissing it better only works on little kids. Grownups need hospital medicine to get better.”

“So you didn’t try?”

Ben shakes his head again. He doesn’t give a lot of kisses to Grandma, just the one when he and Mommy leave after Sunday dinners. He doesn’t like her very much. Her house smells funny, and he’s not allowed to touch anything, and she doesn’t have any toys he can play with. She’s kind of mean and she always gets mad when he gets bored at dinner and crawls under the table to play. When Ben complained about it, Mommy said it’s ‘cause she’s strict, which is a grownup word that means she has lots of stupid rules that she thinks little kids should follow.

Ben feels really bad about not liking her, but he can’t help it.

“Do you want to try it?” the doctor asks.

Ben stops coloring and looks up at the doctor, surprised. None of the other grownups had thought it was a good idea at all. “Kissing her better?”

The doctor nods. 

“Do you think it would work?” Ben asks, the twisty feeling in his tummy easing a little.

“I think so. As long as you really, really want your grandma to get better.” The doctor leans in a little, drops his voice like he’s sharing a secret with Ben. “Do you really, really want your grandma to get better?”

Ben nods. Maybe he doesn’t give her a lot of kisses and maybe she’s strict, but it would be mean to want her to stay sick. And he knows Grandma is in a lot of pain, even though Mommy said the medicine the doctors were giving her were keeping her from feeling bad. The medicine’s not working though, and when he tried to tell his mom that, she just got all sad and told him to go play with his cars.

“Okay.” The doctor gets up and offers his hand. “Let’s go try while your mom and aunt are talking to the doctor.”

Ben stares up at the doctor, alarmed. “Mommy said I wasn’t s’pose to go in Grandma’s room.”

“I know you don’t want to get in trouble, kiddo, but how can you kiss your grandma better if you don’t go in her room?”

The doctor has a point, but Ben isn’t so sure about this. If he gets caught, Mom will take away his toys. But if Grandma gets better, maybe everyone will be so happy they will forget he broke the rules, and he won’t lose his toys. It seems like a big risk to take, but if he can do anything to help his grandma get better so she doesn’t have to go to Heaven yet, he should probably do it. 

Ben checks on his mom again to see if she’s watching. The doctor is gone, and Mommy and Aunt Sarah are hugging each other and crying and not paying any attention to Ben at all. It’s scary, seeing them cry like that, and Ben decides that if he can make Mommy and Aunt Sarah happy again, he should try kissing grandma better, even if he does lose his toys forever.

Ben slides off the chair and takes the doctor’s hand. 

They walk down the hall to Grandma’s room. The man in the red vest comes with them, too, but he stops in the doorway when they enter and hovers there, like he’s waiting on something. 

The room is dark inside, except for a little lamp next to the bed, and there are a lot of machines, whirring and beeping and flashing their little lights. The doctor walks Ben to Grandma’s bed. Grandma looks so scary. She’s trembling all over, and has a whole bunch of tubes coming out of her, and doesn’t have any hair on her head. Her lips are moving like she’s talking to someone, but no sound is coming out, and her skin looks weird, stretched tight in some places and droopy in others, like it doesn’t quite fit her bones anymore.

Ben grips the doctor’s hand as hard as he can. That twisty feeling in his tummy is back again, even worse than before. He wants to run away, to find Mommy and hide his face in her neck and make her take him home.

The doctor crouches down next to him. “Don’t be afraid, Ben,” he whispers. He puts his big hand on Ben’s back and starts rubbing in circles. “This is just what sickness does to people, but you can make her better. Don’t you want your grandma to get better?”

Grandma looks so small in the bed, and she hurts. She hurts so _bad_.

Ben nods. 

“Can you be brave just a little longer? 

Ben swallows thickly and nods again.

The doctor smiles, all big and toothy. “That’s my boy.” He sweeps Ben up and sits him next to Grandma, and Ben clutches the sleeve of the doctor’s coat in terror. She looks so much worse up close. Ben can see all the blue veins under her skin, and her eyes are watery and unfocused. She smells bad, too, sort of sour and dusty.

“It’s okay, Ben, You’re doing great.” The doctor’s voice is soothing, and Ben relaxes as he rests a hand on Ben’s shoulder and keeps it there. “Now, this is important. Before you kiss her, you have to tell her what to do, okay? Tell her she has to get better so she knows what to do with your kiss.”

“Okay.” Ben takes a deep breath like he always does when Mommy has to pull off a Band Aid, and leans down to whisper in her ear, “Grandma, you gotta get better, okay?”

And then he kisses her on the cheek like he always does when it’s time to leave after Sunday dinner, but this time there’s a quick flash of light, bright and yellow like sunshine, and Ben jerks back, startled.

“Oh, good job, Ben,” the doctor says, all smiles. He pats Ben on the back. “I think that’s one of the best kissing betters I’ve ever seen.”

Ben’s confused though. Nothing has changed. He can tell. “But she’s still sick, and she hurts.”

“Well, you’re only four, kiddo. You have to be a lot older for kissing better to work right away, but give her a few days, and she’ll be right as rain.”

Ben narrows his eyes at the doctor. “Are you sure?”

“I am.” The doctor makes a big X across his chest with one finger. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

Ben considers that for a minute. That’s a pretty big promise to make. “Okay,” he says with a nod. “I believe you.”

“Benjamin Isaac Braden!”

Ben jumps at the sound of his mom’s voice, not loud, but sharp. Mommy is in the doorway, hands on her hips. Aunt Sarah is behind her, sniffling into a tissue, Ben’s _Lion King_ coloring book and his crayons clutched in one hand. The doctor is nowhere to be found.

“What are you doing in here?” Mom comes over to the bed and scoops him up. “I thought I told you to stay in the chair.”

Ben hunches his shoulders. He’s about to lose his toys. He can tell because she used his full name. “I was just kissing her better.”

Aunt Sarah lets out a loud sob, and Mommy’s eyes get all wet. 

“Oh, baby. I’m sure she feels better already.” His mom cuddles him close and sniffles a little, kisses him on the top of his head. Aunt Sarah makes a whimpering sobbing noise and rubs Ben’s back. No one seems to be mad anymore, and Ben is a little confused. Does this mean he gets to keep his toys?

After a minute, Mom pulls back a little to look at him and smoothes down his hair. “Ready to go home? Aunt Sarah is going to stay tonight, but we’ll come back tomorrow, okay?”

Ben nods and puts his arms around her neck. Going home sounds like a really good idea. Now that he’s not worried about getting in trouble, he’s suddenly really, really tired. He’s feels as tired as he does when he and Mommy go to Miss Annie’s house, and he gets to swim in her big pool all day. Mommy and Aunt Sarah start talking about when they will come back tomorrow, and Ben rests his cheek on Mommy’s shoulder, his eyes starting to droop. Mommy’s voice is a nice rumble under his ear, and he’s just about to fall asleep when he hears someone say, “You cheated.”

Ben opens his eyes. The doctor and the man in the red vest are standing in the doorway of Grandma’s room, looking at Ben. The doctor smiles and waves by wiggling his fingers, but the man in the red vest is pouting like a little kid, hands shoved into his pockets.

“Did not,” says the doctor. “I helped him a little to keep him from hurting himself, but the healing was all Ben.”

“Fine.” The man in the red vest pouts more and slaps a twenty dollar bill into the doctor’s palm. “You’ve made a hero. Good on you.”

“Oh, don’t be like that, baby brother.” The doctor snaps the bill taut a couple of times and winks at Ben. “It’s just twenty dollars. Besides, I thought you’d be impressed with my trickery.”

Mom says bye to Aunt Sarah and walks out of the room. The doctor and the man in the red vest part to let her pass, but Mommy doesn’t seem to notice. They fall into step behind them as Mommy heads for the elevators down the hall, and Ben lifts his head to watch them over her shoulder.

“This is not trickery,” the man in the red vest says, motioning towards Ben. “This is blatant stupidity, Apollo. You didn’t just muck about with an angel vessel, you mucked around with an _archangel_ vessel.”

Ben has no idea what they’re talking about, and he’s not sure if he’s being called stupid or not. He decides he doesn’t like the man in the red vest, and scowls at him to let him know.

“Yeah, well,” the doctor says with a shrug and puts the money into his pocket. “The way I see it, if you're gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?”

The man in the red vest rolls his eyes. “You’re quoting mortal movies, now? You’ve been spending too much time with the Muses again.”

The doctor sighs. “At least they don’t pout like a sullen little baby when they lose bets.”

Mommy stops at the elevator and pushes the down button. The doctor and the man in the red vest stop just behind them like they’re waiting, too. 

“Well, I hope all the divinity you put into the kid was worth it when one of the angels shows up to smite your _numen_ into dust.” The man in the red vest is looking at Ben with his mouth turned down in a mean way, and Ben tightens his arms around Mommy’s neck.

Just then, the elevator dings and opens. Mommy steps in, but the doctor and the man in the red vest don’t. The doctor gives Ben a little wave; Ben smiles and waves back.

“He’s four years old, and he just cured a terminal case of stage four pancreatic cancer by giving his grandmother a kiss on the cheek. Trust me, Hermes,” Ben hears the doctor say just before the doors close, “It was worth it.”


	16. Chapter 16

Ben is in for surgery for six hours.

He crashes twice and nearly bleeds out. A doctor comes out every now and then to give them an update, and each time it’s like a little bit of Lisa’s soul dies.

If Ben doesn’t make it, she’s not sure she will, either.

Dean paces the waiting room restlessly, back and forth, back and forth, like a lion pacing the confines of its cage until Lisa finally snaps at him to sit down or go somewhere else. He heels like a kicked dog, sits down one chair over, and hangs his head. 

Sam shows up a couple of hours in, looking harried and concerned, but safe enough. Dean is on him in a flash, asking if he’s okay, where he’d been, and all but patting him down to check for broken bones. Sam scowls at his brother and extracts himself from the mother henning with promises of the full story later and questions about Ben. 

“In surgery,” Lisa says, angry and jealous for Ben’s sake, even though it’s petty and unfair to want to deny Sam’s place in Dean’s life.

But then Sam nods solemnly and settles in the chair next to Dean, assumes the vigil with them, and Lisa’s anger diminishes a little. 

Not long after, a sheriff’s deputy appears, asking questions about the boy who was brought in with a chest wound, but Sam is on him like lightning, walks him down the hall before he gets the first question out. They have a short, apparently convincing discussion that ends with the shaking of hands and the back of the sheriff, disappearing around a corner.

“How did you do that?” Lisa asks, curious despite herself.

Sam just shrugs, ducks his head sheepishly. “I still had my Fed badge on me.”

Lisa decides she doesn’t want to know.

When the doctor comes out for a final time, he talks about diaphragmic ruptures and punctured lungs, but Lisa only hears the important thing: Ben is alive. He’s in ICU and things can still go south, but he’s alive.

They let them in to see him, she and Dean as a collective unit, as Ben’s _parents_. She teeters between finding it comforting and finding it terrifying that Dean is finally and openly sharing full parental status, second supernatural fathers aside. She doesn’t understand what happened out there in that field yet, doesn’t understand what Ben was doing summoning the Furies or why stabbing himself was the only way to get Apollo out of his body. She doesn’t understand why Dean claiming paternity of Ben seemed to be so important to everyone and why Athena looked so fucking displeased to hear it, but she does know that the claiming made it real somehow, real and official and powerful, and she couldn’t have kept Dean out of Ben’s hospital room even if she wanted to.

Dean, at least, loves Ben. She knows he loves Ben, was willing to take on dad duties even when he didn’t know Ben was his. She can see it as they enter the ICU and take up positions on both sides of Ben’s bed, sees it in the way he looks at him, in the way he rests his hand so tenderly on Ben’s head.

Ben has that deathly pallor still, his lips bloodless, his eyelashes dark against his pale cheeks. He’s hooked up to so many tubes and machines, to heart monitors and IV drips, Lisa can barely find a place to touch him, but she manages. She rests her hand on his chest just above the bandages to feel him breathing. She clutches his limp hand against her chest, absorbing the slow rhythm of his pulse beneath her fingers. He’s there, alive, his heart beating, blood rushing through his limbs, and it feels like she can breathe again.

She doesn’t want to remember the words of the old woman, but she does, clearly and precisely; every word, every syllable is burned into her memory though she tried her hardest to forget. Part of the fortune the blind old woman had given her that day in 1997 had just come true, sometime between the time she fell asleep next to Ben on Dean’s bed and when she went stumbling into the wheat field to find hideous hell monsters crawling out of the ground around her baby and an arrow shoved into his stomach.

She looks up at Dean on the other side of the bed, his eyes brimming with tears of relief and self-blame, his hand still on Ben’s head, and she knows she can never let the rest of the fortune happen, not for Ben and not for Dean.

She knows what she has to do.

* * *

Dean frickin’ hates hospitals.

He hates the sharp antiseptic-and-sickness smell of them and the constant white noise, the low murmur of voices and the whirr of machinery. He hates being laid up in them, hates being poked and prodded and attached to tubes, hates the helplessness and the inability to set up the appropriate defenses against the things that usually put him there in the first place. Worse, though, is having to see someone he loves laid up instead, hates sitting by and waiting, half-convinced the next time the doctor comes, it will be as the bearer of bad news.

Sitting next to Ben’s hospital bed is no exception. It’s torture watching the slow rise and fall of his chest and listening to the steady beep of the heart monitor while Ben just lies there, white as a sheet and unconscious. They moved him out of ICU the day before, but he hasn’t woken since he came out of surgery. The doctors say not to worry; it isn’t a coma, he’s just sleeping. It’s terrifying, though, the endless sleeping, especially knowing how strong Ben’s healing abilities are, but there isn’t anything to do about it, no one he can tell without drawing attention to Ben’s abnormally strong immune system. 

Lisa sits on the other side of the bed silently, hand curled around Ben’s limp hand. She’s starting to worry him, too. Lisa’s a talk-it-out kind of person just like Sam, but she’s hasn’t spoken a word in hours, not since they were first allowed in to see Ben. She had even been leaving it to Dean to deal with the doctors and the nurses. She has this glazed look in her eyes, like she’s not quite there. Dean is used to her being this steady, practical oasis of calm; those nights he woke up screaming or the days when he knew one more drink would be one drink too many, she’d been the one there to talk him down from the ledge, she’d been the one to help him land on his feet. Now, her silence, that emptiness in her gaze, well, he’s not sure if he can handle the role reversal if he has to be the one talking her down.

A surge of anger wells up at his helplessness, at his inability to protect Ben and Lisa in any way. Dean wants to hit something, possibly himself – that this is his fault has not escaped his notice – but that’s not an option right now. He channels his burst of anger into getting up and going to the window. It looks down into the visitor’s parking lot, and he gets there just in time to see the Impala pulling into a spot below, the morning sun winking on her windshield. 

Sam had left not long after Ben came out of ICU with promises of returning with a change of clothes and decent coffee. Dean had been unsettled to see him go, but he had a car to ditch – Artemis had dumped him in Topeka when she bothered to bring him back to Kansas – and Dean suspects that he also went to see for himself the wheat field where the Furies had come up.

Sam gets out of the Impala with a tray of coffee, pulls a duffle bag from the trunk. From above he doesn’t look like the giant he is, and Dean feels something ease in his chest. He always does better with Sam at his back.

“Sam’s back,” Dean says just to hear something other than the beeping of the machinery.

“I don’t understand,” is Lisa’s answer.

Dean starts at the unexpected but welcome sound of her voice. He turns, finds her frowning down at Ben’s hand, still limp in her own.

“You don’t understand what?” he asks, because he’s pretty sure that Sam’s return isn’t _that_ confusing.

“Everything. What happened out on that field, or how Ben managed to kill Apollo but not himself, or how you’re his father without even being there-“ She stops, turns her glazed look on him. “I don’t _understand_.”

Okay, so Lisa is ready to freak out, now. That’s cool. She held it together for a long time and she’s due a freak out. Ben’s alive, Sam’s coming up with coffee, and the bad guys are dead. Dean’s got this.

Dean crosses his arms, props one hip against the windowsill. Last question first. “There are things that will steal human DNA to change their forms, and some of them use it to reproduce.” He pushes away the memory of the Amazons and Emma. “That’s what Apollo did.”

“And you’re okay with that?” Her tone is scandalized, and Dean is more than happy to hear the edge of anger in her voice, but he has no idea how she arrived at that conclusion.

“What? No,” he says. “Why the hell would I be okay with that?”

“Well, you just sound really fucking calm about a thing stealing your DNA to reproduce.” 

Dean rubs a hand across his mouth, shifts from one foot to another. “Lis, I am not calm. I’m pissed and horrified, and I could probably do with a couple of hours in a hot shower with a scrub brush. But at this point?” Dean shrugs. He’s so, so tired and so completely inadequate for giving her what she needs. “I don’t know. The supernatural doesn’t give a fuck about your consent. In fact, if it doesn’t kill you, it’s probably raping you in some way. So when you get a kid out of it who’s more human than not, who’s as smart and brave and awesome as Ben is, you count it as a win. I’ve seen a lot of awful shit in my time, and what happened to us? Trust me when I say we got off easy.”

“I let it into my apartment, Dean.” Her voice trembles. “It got into bed with me.”

“I know.” There’s a surge of territorial anger, a vestigial caveman urge to kill and smash and destroy the thing that had hurt his girl, an urge which, for many reasons, Dean can’t indulge in, the least of which is the fact that Lisa isn’t his girl anymore and probably never will be again. “And believe me, if he hadn’t been possessing Ben, I’d have killed him for that alone. But he’s dead, now. You don’t ever have to worry about him again.”

She shrugs, turns worried eyes on Ben’s motionless form. “Maybe not. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t other things to worry about.”

Dean nods. “Yeah. I know. But me and Sam are going to make sure you guys are safer this time.”

She pulls her eyes away from Ben and pins him to his spot with a look of scathing anger and disgust. “As opposed to completely erasing our memories so that we have no idea what’s out there or how to protect ourselves?” Her tone is whip sharp; he’s surprised he’s not bleeding. “Don’t hurt yourself.”

Dean hunches his shoulders. “I deserved that.”

“Yeah, you did.”

“Look, Lis, I’m-“

“Don’t say it.” She sighs like she is as tired as he is, and her voice gentles though it remains stern, a more grownup appropriate version of her mom voice. “I know you’re sorry, but I don’t want to hear it right now. What you did to us? My God, Dean. Erasing our memories? What were you thinking? You can’t just do that to people. Talk about not giving a fuck about consent.”

Dean feels like Ben must when he gets one of her dressing downs. “I was thinking you deserved better than me.”

Lisa huffs, and her eyes flash, and she sits forward, body taut and straining. Her hands are tight on the arms of the chair as if her grip is the only thing keeping her from launching herself at him. “You know what, Dean? Fuck you. We dealt with your alcoholism, your screaming nightmares, and your overprotective streak. When you told us to move, we left our entire lives behind and moved. When Sam came back and you started hunting again, we dealt with that, too. Do you know why? Because we loved you, and the good outweighed the bad. When you wiped our memories, you took the good along with the bad and left us with giant gaping holes in our memories. Maybe we did deserve better, but we didn’t want better. We wanted you, even if only in our memories.” She slumps back in the chair and looks away from him in disgust. “Asshole.”

Dean doesn’t know what to do. Does he apologize anyway? Does he slink from the room with his tail between his legs? Does he just shut up and sit still and hope she doesn’t have anything else to say? Because he’s completely overwhelmed by his own failure right now. He did them wrong, and he can’t fix it, can’t undo it, doesn’t even know where to start. He can’t give them what they want, let alone what they need. He was trying to protect them by removing himself from the equation, but he couldn’t even do that right.

He feels like he’s being flayed alive, and having had the experience of actually being flayed alive, he’s not exaggerating at all.

“Lisa-“ he begins, because he’s stupid and doesn’t know when to shut the hell up, but a throat clears in the doorway and saves him from incurring any more of Lisa’s wrath.

Sam is standing there, the coffee tray in his hands and the duffle bag over his shoulder. “Um, I can come back?”

“No,” Lisa snaps in the mom voice and gets to her feet. “Give me the bag.”

Sam never had the chance to bear the brunt of their own mother’s stern mom voice, but he must recognize the tone on some instinctual level, because he obediently hands over the duffle. He watches her storm from the room with a troubled expression. 

“You in trouble?” he asks, brow creased with worry.

Dean sighs and nods and pushes away from the wall. “And then some,” he says and liberates his coffee from Sam’s giant hands.

* * *

The beeping of machines and the murmur of voices bleed in first, then the pinch of an IV in the back of his hand and the itch of the nasal cannula under his nose. The deep down ache of the arrow wound comes next and the press of the quiver, there but not there, between the bed and his back, and the sluggish exhaustion of his body, worn down by the Titan magic.

Ben slowly opens his eyes, forcing his eyelids to peel apart from a tacky seam of sleep gunk.

It’s daytime, and he’s in a hospital. He’s attached to a heart monitor and a couple of other gadgets that he knows the purpose of but not the name, and his mouth tastes like a dirty sock. The surgeon did a good job sewing him up; the arrow wound is slowly mending, the sutures holding it together until his body can close the breech itself. He’ll scar, but not too badly, and it’s still a little terrifying to know how much is going on in his own body, but he also likes knowing that he’ll be okay. 

“A god in the White House,” Dean says somewhere to Ben’s left, voice low and rumbling. “Look at her, she’s not even bothering to hide.”

Ben turns his head, finds Dean slumped down in a chair next to the bed, a couple days worth of stubble on his jaw. Sam is leaning against the wall next to the window, hands in pockets, and unlike Dean, clean shaven. They are both watching a press conference on the TV mounted in the corner; the president is at the podium, talking about the recovery efforts of the Chicago fires and the East Coast tsunami, while in the background, the woman who had come to accuse Hermes, the goddess Athena, stands behind the president, looking pleasantly blank.

“Not just in the White House,” Sam says. “She’s the White House Chief of Staff. She advises the president, she controls the flow of people who meet with the president, she negotiates with Congress-“

They look different, Ben decides. They haven’t noticed that he’s awake, so he looks back and forth between them while they talk, trying to figure out why they look so strange to him, so...clean.

“Yeah, Sam, I get it.” Dean sounds angry and impatient. “She’s the gatekeeper _and_ the key master. What are we going to do about it?”

Sam shrugs. “What can we do about it? She’s in the frickin’ White House. I think the Secret Service would take exception if we showed up guns blazing. Besides, don’t we have plenty of other things to worry about right now with the trials and all?”

“Yeah, well, you didn’t see the way she looked at Ben,” Dean says with a worried grumble, and it’s then that it hits Ben. He should see the wound on Dean’s side, spurting phantom blood. And he should see the burns on Sam, bubbling and leaking yellow puss, but he doesn’t. He just sees them, just their hair and skin and hands and bodies, free of scars, phantom and otherwise.

He bursts into tears.

He sobs uncontrollably, gross, loud, hiccupy sobs like he’s a little kid, and he can’t stop it, can’t get a grip, even though he’s so horrifically embarrassed that he’s crying like a big baby now, after it’s all over. Beyond him is a flurry of activity – a chair scrapes on the linoleum, the rolling cart is pushed across the room, the TV is muted - and then Dean’s hands are on him, smoothing back his hair like his mom would.

“Whoa, hey, Ben. It’s okay.” Dean is a blurry person shape above him, his voice low and gentle. “You’re safe now. It’s okay.”

Sam clears his throat somewhere across the room. “I’ll, uh, go get Lisa.”

“Yeah,” Dean says, distracted as he pets Ben some more. “Ben, kiddo, look at me.”

Ben tries to focus on Dean through his tears, blinking and sniffling. He gets a little bit of control back, and the tears ease off, but Dean remains blurry, a glob of grays and browns.

“You did good, Ben. You’re safe. Okay?” Ben doesn’t miss how raspy and deep his voice has become. “I swear, it’s all over.”

Ben nods and sniffles again, forcing himself to stop the tears. Dean gets up and crosses the room, comes back with a handful of tissues. He helps him pull off the cannula, and Ben snatches the tissues out of Dean’s hand before he can do anything mortifying like wipe away the tears and snot for Ben, because, dude, he may be crying like a little kid, but he’s not actually a little kid. 

The IV pinches his hand sharply as Ben wipes his sticky eyes and blows his nose, and then Dean is shoving a plastic cup with a bendy straw in his face and telling him to drink something. The water is sweet and clear, washing away the dirty sock taste in his mouth, and it feels so good going down throat.

When Ben pushes it away knowing that he shouldn’t drink too much too fast, Dean sets the cup on the rolling table and drags his chair closer to the bed. “Better?”

Ben relaxes back into the pillow. “Yeah.” His own voice is low and nasally from crying. “Mom okay?”

“She’s fine, but a little freaked out. She’s down in the cafeteria getting something to eat. Sam’s going to get her. How are you feeling?”

“Bad. Everything hurts.” Everything does hurt, everywhere, all over his body, especially the arrow wound. The drugs they have been giving him are wearing off, and he idly wonders when they plan to give him the next dose.

“Yeah, I bet. You nearly died, and you’ve been out for almost three days. You scared the hell out of us, Ben.”

“I know. Sorry. Had to do something, though.”

“Yeah,” Dean says softly. “I know. But the Furies, Ben? They would have, well, they would have done to you what they did to Hermes had I not laid claim to you.”

“Yeah. I get that, but he was getting so strong and there wasn’t anything else that could stop him.” Ben looks away from Dean, his eyes landing on the TV, not sure he can look at Dean right now. The president has been replaced by the mayor of Chicago, and whatever he is saying about the fires is flashing across the screen in badly spelled closed captioning. “I’m sorry you had to do that.”

In the corner of his eye, Dean stiffens. “Sorry I had to do what? Say I’m your dad? Ben, that’s the best thing that came out of this whole damned situation. Why would you even think that?”

Ben’s eyes are burning and his throat feels tight; he’s not sure he can keep himself from crying again. “What else am I supposed to think?”

“Well, not that.” Dean comes abruptly to his feet, paces to the window where he stands with his back to Ben, his head bowed, shoulders slumped. Ben lies there, tense, waiting anxiously. On the TV, the mayor of Chicago is gone, and a female reporter in a windbreaker is standing in front of a bunch of washed up wreckage on some beach somewhere.

Finally, Dean runs his hand over his mouth and turns around, comes back to the bed.

“I’m sorry you thought that, Ben.” Dean rubs the back of his neck nervously. “I’m not sure I want to know the answer to this, but did you read that book I found in your backpack?”

That’s a weird enough question that Ben has to look at Dean full on again. “No. I mean, I read, like, the first chapter. It’s what helped me remember. But it was too weird, reading about us like we were characters in a book. How did that guy even know about us?”

“It’s a long story, dude.” He perches on the edge of the chair again. “But look, if you had read the whole thing, you would have read about how when I thought you might be my kid, I was thrilled. And when your mom told me I wasn’t, you know what I told her?”

Ben shakes his head. 

“I told her I’d be proud to be your dad. And I am. I would have owned up to it before, but I thought - and I’m pretty sure your mom thought it, too – I thought it would be better for everyone if we kept it a secret.”

A rush of overwhelming anger slices through Ben, not just at Dean, but at his mom, too. “Well, it wasn’t.”

Dean just shrugs. “Yeah, well, what can I say Ben? Hindsight is 20/20. But you hear what I’m saying, right? Never, ever think that I don’t want to be your dad. That’s the furthest thing from the truth. I love you. You’re my son.”

And that’s it, Ben’s tearing up again. “You’re such a girl,” Ben says, smiling stupidly. 

Dean’s own answering smile is pretty stupid, too. “Yeah, well, don’t tell Sam,” he says, and ruffles Ben’s hair.

* * *

Sam looks from Lisa, eyes wide and alarmed, to Ben, who’s got one foot up in Lisa’s lap while she ties his shoe, to the orderly standing nearby with an empty wheelchair, and says, “You’re leaving.”

It isn’t a question. He and Dean were supposed to come back for Lisa and Ben tonight after they set up some rooms for them at the Bunker, but judging by the wheelchair and Ben in his street clothes and Lisa’s hand caught-in-the-cookie-jar expression, she has made other plans. 

If he hadn’t forgotten his phone in Ben’s room, he would have never caught them.

“Look, Sam,” Lisa begins, sounding sincere and earnest, but Sam cuts her off.

He’s got this fury rumbling deep down inside of him, and he doesn’t want to hear whatever excuses she’s got to justify this. “If you’re about to tell me you have a good reason for leaving without telling Dean, you can save it.”

Ben turns his eyes on Lisa, and it’s chilling how much he looks like John right then. “You _lied_ to me.”

Lisa glances between them guiltily, then her mouth flattens and her expression goes hard. She pushes Ben’s foot off her lap and gestures impatiently for the other. “Ben, foot up.” 

Ben raises his other foot obediently and lets her tie his shoe, but he’s glaring at her with the heat of a thousand burning suns. “What the hell, Mom?” 

“In a minute. And watch your language.” Lisa nudges his foot off her lap and stands, turns to the orderly. “Keep an eye on him. I’ll be right back.”

The orderly’s eyes are wide like he wishes he could just disappear into the floor, but he nods obediently.

“You,” she says to Sam, slipping past him and out the door. “Come with me.”

“Sam?” Ben says, looking at him like he has all the answers.

Sam shakes his head. “I don’t know, man. Let me talk to her.”

Lisa stalks purposefully into the room next door, and Sam follows. It’s empty, no signs of current occupation, and it’s dimly lit by stripes of afternoon sunlight falling through the blinds. Down the hall, nurses chatter and phones ring and human voices swell and recede arhythmically.

“This is how it is, Sam.” Lisa crosses her arms with an air of finality. “I’m going to take Ben, and you and Dean are not going to try to find us.”

Sam clenches his hands and takes a deep, steadying breath because he really wants to start yelling at her and never, ever stop.

See, he has this plan. He finishes the trials, the gates of Hell close, and whether he’s alive on the other side or not, Dean gets out of hunting. If Sam survives, he does too. His year with Amelia, despite its repercussions, reminded him what it was like to live like a civilian, to go to bed at night without checking the salt lines, to eat food that hasn’t been heated in a convenience store microwave, to wash clothes because they are dirty and not because they are soaked in blood or caked with grave dirt. If they close the gates of Hell, they should get to do that, _Dean_ should get to do that. They’ve given so much, it’s time for them to get something that makes it all worthwhile. With Ben’s unexpected reentry into Dean’s life, Sam had seen it as his chance to make sure Dean gets to have the normal life he secretly desires. Lisa may never take him back, but Dean should get to settle down in the same town and share joint custody and just be Ben’s dad.

This is supposed to be a second chance for everyone involved, but what’s happening here? Lisa taking Ben and running? This is screwing up their second chances beyond repair.

“And you’re going to do it without telling Dean? Or even Ben?” Sam’s voice comes out nice and even, and that’s good, but he’s barely got a grip on his temper. This isn’t _fair_. “I get why you wouldn’t want Ben anywhere near our lives, but this is pretty fucked up. Dean’s not going to stop you from doing whatever you want with Ben, so at least have the decency to let him say goodbye.”

Lisa shifts uneasily. “I know you think I’m being a vindictive bitch, but I’m not trying to hurt Dean.” She’s being so earnest, and it’s rubbing him the wrong way. “That’s the last thing I want to do. I’m trying to protect him.”

Sam scoffs. “Yeah? What from?”

“From the fucking fortune that old woman gave me!” 

Lisa’s shouting is unexpected; Sam takes a step back, startled out of his own rage by her sudden anger. 

“I am trying to protect them, Sam, whether you believe me or not.” Lisa’s shaking now, and there are twin spots of color on her cheeks. “I’m sorry that I have to take such extreme measures and hurt them to do it, but I can’t let anything thing else she told me happen.”

Sam nods. “I get what you’re saying about protecting them and all.” His anger is long gone, but it has been replaced by an uneasy fear that is a thousand times worse. “I do. But, Lisa, what the hell are you talking about?”

She eyes him like she’s sizing him up for a fight, and he’s pretty sure she’s just going to storm out without further explanation. But then she huffs, closes her eyes, and presses her lips together like she’s trying to get herself under control.

When she opens her eyes again, she says, “Okay. Fine. Maybe you can help. This is what you and Dean, do right?” Her tone is defensive, and she plops down on the edge of the bed like an angry teenager being forced to talk it out with her parents. “When I was in college, about a year before I met Dean, I went to this traveling carnival with my friends. There was this fortuneteller calling herself the Oracle of Delphi, if you can believe that, and my friend Anne thought it would be a hoot if we had our fortunes told-“

“Wait,” Sam says, holding up one hand to stop her. His heart is pounding away in his chest like he’s in the middle of a fight and the other guy is winning. “The fortuneteller was calling herself the Oracle of Delphi?”

Lisa eyes him distrustfully. “Yeah. It was on a big glittery sign outside her trailer. Why?”

“Shit,” Sam mutters. 

Lisa scoffs. “Oh, please. You don’t think she really was the Oracle of Delphi, do you?” 

“I don’t... I don’t know.” Sam drags one of the guest chairs over to the bed and sits, puts himself on her level. “Just, tell me the rest.”

“Okay. Right. She, um....” Lisa waves one hand around like she’s trying to find the right words. “She read everyone’s palm and told them who they were going to marry, how many kids they’d have, you know, the usual fortuneteller scam stuff. I didn’t let her because I wasn’t going to waste my money on some crackpot’s lies about the future. But when I tried to leave, she called me back. I don’t know why I went back, but it was like I couldn’t help myself. It was like I had to hear what she had to say.”

Lisa pauses, mouth turned down. Her eyes drop, and she fiddles nervously with a string hanging from the sleeve of the too large Henley she appropriated from Dean. Her defensive anger is gone, and now she just looks defeated and scared. 

“What did she tell you?” he asks gently, hoping to prompt her into talking again. He’s not sure at what point he stopped seeing her as the woman about to do a runner with Dean’s kid and started seeing her as a witness, but it’s happened. He almost wishes he could see her as the evil ex again because it would be a hell of a lot easier than dealing with whatever bombshell he knows she’s about to drop.

“The truth.” Lisa looks up; there are tears welling in her eyes, but they haven’t spilled yet. “I can’t tell you how I knew, but I did. She told me the truth. I could feel it in my bones. It scared me so badly, and I didn’t even understand most of what she said. For a long time I tried to forget it, but I couldn’t, so I just did my best never to think about it. After a while, I convinced myself she was just some crazy old fraud, but it was always there, in the back of my mind, you know? It affected every decision I’ve ever made about Ben, and it’s the reason I never told Dean that he was Ben’s father.” 

“Lisa,” Sam asks, even though he doesn’t really want to know. “What was the fortune?” 

Lisa glances away him and rubs her hands on her jeans nervously. 

“Come on,” he says. “I can’t help if you don’t give me everything.”

She takes a deep breath, like she’s bracing herself to have a bone shoved into place, and recites the prophecy with the ease of perfect recall. Sam shivers at the words echoing through that empty hospital room with sunlight streaming through the slats of the blinds and the mundane white noise of the hospital humming along in the background. He’s never heard a prophecy before, but he can feel the weight of it, the power; he doesn’t know what it means, but it terrifies him, and he understands what Lisa meant when she said she could feel the truth of it in her bones.

When she stops speaking, it’s like a weight has been lifted from Sam’s chest.

“Are you sure that’s the whole thing?” he asks. 

“Yeah. That’s it. Every awful, terrifying word.” 

“Do you have any idea what it means?”

“Well, now I do. Ben literally has two fathers, and the parts about their fates...” The tears begin welling in her eyes again. “Sam, Ben killed Apollo out there on that field. And if that’s what that part is referring to, I can’t let the rest happen. Not to Ben and not to Dean. That’s why I have to take Ben and I have to go.“

“No. I know.” Sam slumps back in the chair, considers the fortune. He’s pretty sure that the thing Lisa is calling a fortune is the prophecy about Ben Artemis mentioned. Apollo had indicated to Dean that it was tied to Lisa in some way – it wasn’t all that unusual for prophecies in Greek mythology to be attached to the mother of a hero – but it had never occurred to Sam that it had been given directly to her. But it makes sense, somehow, especially since the last part was specifically about Lisa and no one else. And if Lisa’s right, and Apollo’s death fulfilled part of the prophecy, he doesn’t even want to consider what that could mean for Dean.

“Sam?” Lisa says. “What are you thinking over there?”

“I’m thinking that fortuneteller was the real deal. I don’t think she read your fortune, I think she gave you a Delphic prophecy.”

Lisa barks out a bitter little laugh. “Of course. I have a fucking prophecy on my head. How is that even possible?”

“Well, according to the history books, Theodosius I closed all of the oracular sites in the 4th century. But there are other stories in the kind of books we use that say that Apollo moved the Oracle when he realized that it was unsafe to house her in Delphi once Christianity became the official religion of Rome.”

“And now she’s a fortuneteller in a traveling carnival?” Lisa says skeptically.

Sam shrugs. “It’s the perfect hiding place. No one would look twice.”

Lisa wipes her eyes with the heel of her hand and sniffles a little. “You ever feel cursed, Sam?”

This time it’s Sam barking out the bitter laugh. “Every day. Dean and I even discussed the possibility of a literal curse.” 

“It would be just your luck,” she says, wiping at her eyes again.

“Yeah, it would.” Sam shifts forward in his seat, mind switching to planning mode, making a list of the things Lisa and Ben are going to need to start over. “Look, give me a couple of hours, let me make some calls-“

“Sam, I don’t need your help.”

“Yeah, you do,” he says, voice hard. He feels that anger rumbling around again, but it’s not focused on Lisa this time, just the utter injustice of it all. “You’re about to disappear and change your name so Dean can never find you again, right?”

Lisa shifts uneasily. “Yeah.”

“Well, I’m going to help you do that because I want that prophecy to come true about as much as you do.” His heart feels like it’s being shredded inside of him, and here he thought his heart couldn’t be broken any further. “I can’t let anything happen to them, not if I can help it.”

Lisa eyes him, weighing him out. “Dean can’t know where we’re going and neither can you.”

Sam won’t pretend it doesn’t hurt, but he gets where she’s coming from. “Not a problem.”

She hesitates a moment, then says, “Okay. One hour Sam. Any more than that, and I’m gone.”

“Deal,” Sam says, and goes to make his calls.

* * *

The bus is idling beside them with a loud rumble and the parking lot smells like exhaust and fried food. Ben is not thrilled to find himself in another bus station about to get on another bus. He’s even less thrilled about the reason why and the fact that no one gives a damn about what he thinks no matter how loudly he’s protested it.

“There’s five hundred in cash in there,” Sam says, putting a thick envelope in his mom’s hand. “It will get you where you’re going and then some. Our friend Charlie will meet you guys in Toledo and set you up with everything you need.” 

His mom doesn’t like taking the money, Ben can tell by the sour face she’s making. She’s always going on about supporting yourself and not depending on others to take care of you, so it’s probably not because it’s Sam giving it to her, but just because she has to take the money at all. “Can he be trusted?”

“She, and yeah. You can trust her. She won’t tell anyone where you are, not even me or Dean, unless you give her your say so. And seriously, Lisa, if anything happens, or there’s something you can’t deal with-“

She nods. “Yeah, I’ll contact you.”

Ben glares hard at them, so pissed he’s shaking. He’s tried bitching and whining and the silent treatment, but Sam and his mom aren’t budging. They won’t even let him say goodbye to Dean; they just keep saying it’s for the best, Sam and Dean are in the middle of something big and dangerous, and Ben and his mom had to go into hiding ASAP and blah blah blah.

Ben has already told them that’s bullshit, because it is, complete and total bullshit. Sam gave him a chiding, “Dude,” and his mother snapped out his full name with a promise that she was keeping a tally of what he would be owing to the swear jar, but Ben doesn’t care about the stupid swear jar. He and Dean just worked out their issues, and now he’s not going to get to see Dean anymore, and yeah, total bullshit.

Sam turns to him, puts his hand on Ben’s shoulder. Ben would shake it off, but the movement would pull at his stitches, and he’s not so keen on purposely making the arrow wound hurt worse than it already does. Ben settles for glaring up at him.

“Can I have a minute?” Sam says to his mom.

Her eyes flicker between them a couple of times before she nods. “Yeah. Go ahead.”

“Come here.” Sam walks Ben away, out of her earshot; Ben thinks about throwing a temper tantrum on principle, making a big, obnoxious scene in front of the whole bus station, but he decides against it out of pride. He’s thirteen and only little kids throw temper tantrums, but man, is it tempting. “You still have the quiver?” 

Ben glares at him and his stupid long hair as hard as he can.. “No. I don’t know what happened to it. It’s just gone.”

Which is a huge lie. The quiver is still strapped to his back in that weird there-not there state, and when Dean had gotten around to asking him about it a couple of days ago, Ben had lied about it then, too. No one can see it, and it apparently hadn’t hampered the surgeon’s ability to cut into his chest or the nurse’s ability to bandage his wounds. He can only assume it hides in the same place where Highlanders keep their swords, which works just as well for him. It’s his, Apollo gave it to him, and he’s going to keep it, whether the adults like it or not. A magical hiding place just makes it easier.

Sam sighs. “I’m not going to take it from you. I just want to know if your aim is as good as Dean says it is.”

Ben eyes him suspiciously. “Yeah, I never miss unless I do it on purpose. Why?” 

“Because I slipped a few hundred dollars into your backpack earlier. Use it to buy a bow. Something that feels right in your hand. You’ll probably want a recurve bow. That’s what Artemis uses, and I suspect that’s what Apollo used, too.”

Ben just stares at him. “Are you serious right now?”

“Yeah. I wouldn’t let you keep it normally, but you and your mom need protection and after everything that’s happened, you’re better suited for the job than she is.”

He knows Sam is new to the uncle thing, and normally, he’d be all about taking advantage of it, but slipping him the money to buy dangerous weapons moves Sam right out of the cool uncle category and right into crazy gun nut territory. “You know this isn’t how it’s supposed to work, right? You’re a grownup. You’re supposed to take dangerous things away from me.”

Sam sighs and jams his hands into the pockets of his jacket. “Look, man. I’ve been where you are. Supernatural shit has been messing with me my entire life, but no one told me until it was too late, and my girlfriend was burning on the ceiling.”

Ben gapes at Sam, no clue what to say to that.

“You’ve got the advantage, here,” Sam continues, oblivious to Ben’s shocked reaction. “You know what you are and what you can do. And you have a good idea of what might come for you.”

Ben didn’t like hearing that; he thought this was all over, that he’d be safe now. “Wait, you think something else might come for me?” 

“You’re a Winchester, Ben. Odds are pretty good, yeah.”

Ben finds himself getting mad all over again. “Then why are you guys making me leave? Because this is just the same stupid crap Dean pulled before, but this time it’s you and Mom instead of him, and that didn’t turn out that great.”

“Ben-“

“No, screw you. I don’t see how hiding is going to help anything. If the monsters want to find me, they’re going to do it whether we’re hiding or not. Am I the only one who learned anything from all of this?”

Ben is so disgusted he can’t even look at Sam anymore. He stomps towards the bus, ignores Sam calling after him and his mom’s brief attempt to stop him. At the open door of the bus, he turns.

“Just so we’re clear,” he says, too mad to give a damn about causing a scene this time. “I think you’re both assholes, and I’m not paying into the swear jar for saying that, either.”

His mom looks hurt and Sam looks apologetic and Ben stomps up the stairs onto the bus. He finds an empty spot and throws his back pack under the seat in front of him, sits down and glares out the window, furious.

From where he’s sitting, he can see his mom and Sam. They exchange a few words. Sam shakes his head. His mom looks back at the bus nervously and sighs. Ben can’t see what she says to Sam next, but she touches him gently on the arm, like a thank you or maybe an apology, and gets on the bus.

The door of the bus shuts behind her with a swish of hydraulics. Mom sidles down the aisle, puts her duffle in the compartment above them, and settles next to him.

“Ben, baby, I’m sorry.” She feels bad about it, he can tell, and he has always hated to see his mother feeling bad, but screw it. Let her suffer some. She’s the one making him leave Dean, Dean who just happens to be his _dad_. She deserves to feel bad for a little while.

“Whatever,” he says and turns away from her best he can without straining his stitches too much. Sam is still out there, hands in pockets, grimly watching the bus. 

The bus begins to roll. Sam gives Ben a little wave, and Ben’s stomach plummets like a lead weight. He sees it briefly as the bus pulls past Sam and out of the parking lot, just a glimpse, but enough of a glimpse to understand.

Sam’s lungs are bleeding again, and Ben can see it clear as day.

* * *

“Where have you been, man? I called you like five times.”

“I know.” Sam clears his throat, and Dean looks up from chopping onions for the stew he’s making. Sam is hovering in the doorway, wearing his bad news posture – hands in pockets, hunched shoulders, head dipped down. “Look, uh, Dean-“

And Dean knows. He just knows. “They’re gone, aren’t they?”

Sam nods. “Yeah.”

Dean puts down the knife, stares blankly at the half chopped onion. “You going to tell me where they went?”

“No. But I don’t know either. Lisa wanted it that way.” 

No less than he deserves, probably. After wiping their memories and leaving them defenseless, he’s surprised Lisa hadn’t had Ben dressed and gone as soon as he woke up. And Ben, Ben had nearly died because of Dean, and yeah, no less than he deserves and probably better for everyone in the long run.

Dean wipes his hands on the dish towel thrown over his shoulder. “You made sure they’re going to be safe, right?” 

“Yeah. Best I could. Look, Dean-”

Dean doesn’t have to look to know that Sam is giving him the compassionate puppy-dog eyes, and any minute now, he’s going to offer to talk about it, and then Dean is going to have to punch the sympathy right off of his little brother’s face.

“Not now, Sam.” Dean throws the dish towel down on the counter and stalks past Sam out of the kitchen “Not ever, in fact. The breaking your nose rule is back in effect.”

“Wait, Dean!” Sam calls after him, but Dean ignores him, retreats into his room where he retrieves the bottle of whiskey from under his bed and settles in to drink away the pain.

* * *

Two days later, Artemis pops into existence next to Sam at a gas station outside of Louisville, the scent of trees and wet leaves mingling with the acrid smell of gasoline. It’s just past two in the morning, Dean is passed out in the passenger seat in a whiskey induced coma, and they’ve still got a good twelve hours of driving ahead of them. Sam plans to push through the night; Kevin had called that afternoon, ranting about the angel tablet and how he and Dean needed to come right now, and he hadn’t gotten anything more coherent out of him than that. Sam was more than happy to drag Dean out of his grief induced bender and get him focused on something else, even if it meant diving back into the trials.

And he had been doing so well, easing back on the drinking, staying away from the hard stuff, but now that Lisa and Ben are gone....

“Where’s Ben?”

Sam nearly jumps out of his skin at the sound of her voice and drops Malcolm Reynold’s credit card into a puddle of mysterious blue liquid.

Sam gives her a dark look as he fishes the card out of the puddle and wipes it clean on his jeans. “Not here.”

“Obviously.” She peers at Dean through the windshield, wrinkling her nose in distaste. “Where are you going? This isn’t a hunt. I would know.”

Sam pulls the gas nozzle out of the pump and slots it into the gas tank. “None of your business.”

She arches an eyebrow at him, and leans against the Impala, arms crossed. “So you’ve left Ben unprotected to do what? Take a cross country trip with your inebriated brother?”

Sam ignores the judgment in her voice and watches the cents tick by on the pump’s display screen. “Ben and Lisa left. They didn’t want our protection.”

“And you just let them go?” she asks, but she doesn’t sound surprised.

“Well, we weren’t going to keep them prisoner.”

Artemis makes a noise, like he’s an idiot for dismissing that option, but says nothing else. She just leans there against the car, staring at Sam in the glare of the halogen lights.

“What?” he snaps when the feeling of her eyes crawling over his skin gets to be too much.

“You understand that now I have to do it, right?”

“Do what?”

“Protect Ben, teach him, show him what he is. You know, do all things that you and your brother are unwilling to do.”

“It’s not about being willing.”

“It is. The extent of your codependence is mindboggling, and your insistence that you two must be the ones to ride in to save the day, well, it’s idiotic. Now that you both know what Ben is, he should be your first priority, but instead, the both of you feel the need to exhaust yourselves in this futile, petty little attempt to close the gates of Hell-“

Sam goes cold. “How did you know about that?”

Artemis smirks. “I told you, Sam, I’m your goddess. You can’t hide something the size of the gates of Hell from me. With every hunt you take, I know you both a little better, I see into your souls a little further. And one day, when you’ve put aside this ridiculous quest and have reached the limit of your mortal abilities, as impressive as they are, you’re going to bring me a blood sacrifice and you’re going to put it on my altar and you’re going to worship me as I deserve.”

“That’s never going to happen,” Sam says, his voice hard and cold.

“Of course, it is. I’m the only one who knows what Lisa’s prophecy really means, and when you’re desperate enough, you’re going to pay me for the knowledge with blood and sacrifice.”

Sam sucks in a sharp gasp. Knowing the prophecy is one thing, but to have the interpretation... 

“Tell me. Tell me what it means.”

Artemis smiles like the Sphinx and her eyes flash gold, quick and bright. “Only with blood and sacrifice, Sam.”

And then she’s gone, leaving the scent of forests and warm rain wafting in her wake.

In the car, Dean wakes and begins to shift around. Sam pulls the gas nozzle free of the car and shoves it back into the pump, then gets back into the car with Dean.

“Who’re you talking to, Sammy?” His voice is slurred with alcohol and sleep.

“No one, man,” Sam says, starting the car. The Impala’s engine rolls over with a deep and familiar rumble. 

Dean runs a hand over his face, and squints at Sam. “You don’t look so good. You haven’t been coughing up blood again, have you?”

Sam sighs, irritated that his chance to share the burden of Dean’s caretaking with someone else has been snatched from him. “No. I’m fine, Dean. Just tired. Go back to sleep and sober up so you can drive in a few hours.”

“Yeah, okay, Sammy” Dean mumbles and slumps against the door again.

Sam pulls out of the parking lot. His hands are shaking, and he’s got a bad feeling sitting in the pit of his stomach. As soon as he gets a chance, he’s going to call Charlie and ask her to get a message to Lisa, to let her know that Artemis still has an interest in Ben and to watch her back. Lisa made a choice, and Sam joined her in it, and there isn’t much he can do about that right now, even if he’s starting to regret leaving them to fend for themselves.

Besides, he and Dean have the gates of Hell to close, and right now, the only way out is through.

When she wakes to the cawing of crows, May knows she will see her father soon. She asks Danica when she brings the morning tea, and her sister confirms that there is a huge murder perched on the power lines at the edge of the fairgrounds. They always swarm around whenever their father is near, waiting, he claims, for their vengeance.

What she doesn’t expect is the girl; she’s not quite twenty, perched uneasily on the edge of adulthood, and she is with a group of giggling girls who want their futures told. None of them really believe, so the Oracle gives them what they want to hear – this one will marry rich, this one will be famous, this one will have four children. But the girl, she scoffs and rolls her eyes at May’s fibs, and when the girls have had their fun, she tries to leave before the Oracle has read her palm.

“Lisa,” May calls after her. “Come back.”

The girl stops her egress, suspicious and frightened, but still she comes to the table, to May. “How do you know my name?”

“I read it on your soul.” She gestures at the chair on the other side of her table. “Please, come, sit down.” 

The girl is silent but for her belabored breathing, but she hasn’t left yet, so the Oracle counts it as a win. May is desperate for her to sit and offer her hand; the weight of a prophecy weighs heavily on her soul, and it wants to be spoken, as all prophecies do. But she is patient and calm, waits on the girl to acquiesce to her fate.

The carriers of a prophecy want to hear it, even if they don’t realize it.

Finally, the legs of the chair scrape along the wooden planking of the trailers as the girl pulls it out to sit.

“What do you want?” she says warily. She smells sweet, like vanilla and cinnamon, a good smell, comforting. This one has a bit of healer about her, her soul like a calm and gentle breeze in the midst of chaos.

“Merely to read your palm. May I?” The Oracle holds out her hand, and after a moment, feels the soft skin of the girl’s hand in hers. May smoothes her fingers across her palm, still supple with youth and potential unlike her own gnarled, arthritic claws. 

The future washes over her immediately, and in her mind, she can see the world, the glow of gods and an ocean of blood. She sees thousands dead in a wash of waves, and fires, burning through a great city, and cars caught in gridlock. She sees great black wings unfurling against the sky, a boy with his eyes burned out, a mark of such unimaginable evil burned into flesh and a jaw bone of a donkey, forged into a blade. She sees soldiers with flame throwers and angels with broken wings and sickness crawling across the land. She sees destruction and death, and the world teetering on the fine edge of fate.

It’s the single most terrifying thing she has ever seen.

“You will have a child, a boy with two fathers, two natured and strong.” The words rise up in her, a true prophecy, a thing that will always come to pass. “He will wield the power of life and death and will walk among the dead. The gifts from his fathers will be a blessing, but his fate lies in their hands and theirs in his. And when the time comes, Lisa, it is you who must take the blade.” 

The clatter of the chair pulls the Oracle from her vision as the girl snatches her warm, young hand from hers and runs, terrified by the truth she heard in those words in the deepest depths of her soul.

“May, she didn’t pay,” Danica says irritably, righting the chair.

“I know, Danica. I didn’t expect her to.”

Her next customer comes in on the heels of the girl, a large man, powerful in form and in personality. The oracle can’t see him, but she can feel him; he wears an angel’s mark on his heart and his past as a bleeding wound. Within him is a great open space able to accommodate a being larger and more powerful than anything that currently walks this earth, a space that has been occupied before, though for only a short time. Next to her, Danica shrinks from his presence, odd for a girl who is always snapping and snarling like a cornered cat, odd until she hears the cock of a gun.

“Have you come to kill an old woman and a child today, John Winchester?”

“That girl-“

May shrugs. “She heard the truth, and it frightened her.”

A pause, half a breath long. “You claim to be the Pythia.”

“I do,” May says. “I am.”

“Where‘s your priest and your temple?”

“You know as well as I do that the Pythia has not resided in Delphi since Theodosius I closed it in the fourth century.” 

“Then where is your interpreter?”

“My twin has been dead these past five years. I am my own interpreter these days, though Danica here sometimes helps even though it’s not her true talent. Would you like to hear your future?”

Though blind, she can feel the weight of his gaze, measuring her out.

“Or perhaps you would like a reference? You have met my sister, Missouri.” She dangles her sister’s name in front of him like a matador dangles his red cloak in front of a bull. “But, wait. You can’t do that without getting an earful from her, as she was the one who sent you here. I know how unpleasant that can be.”

On the other side of the table, there is a snick as John Winchester thumbs the safety on his gun, and the other chair creaks as it receives the weight of a body much heavier than the girl’s.

The Oracle holds out her hand. “Your palm?”

There is a heavy pause before he acquiesces. She takes his hand in her own, gently runs her old, weathered fingers along the lines of his palm, still soft, though John Winchester has done his best to wear away any softness he might still have.

The same images rise again in her mind’s eye: the broken angel wings, the soldiers, the blood and fire and water. The mark of evil and the jaw bone blade. The earth, teetering.

Then the prophecy comes.

“John Winchester. You chose vengeance and anger over your children. You will find what you are looking for but, you will die hard, and your only company will be the demon you pursue. You will never, ever get what you want, but your boys will, eventually. All three of them.” 

“I only have two boys.” She cannot see his smirk, but she can hear it in his voice.

“You have three, whether you know it or not.”

“You’re wrong.” The smirk is gone now, replaced with the steel resolve of deep denial.

The Oracle smiles with pity. “I’m never wrong.”

The chair creaks again as the man stands, rising to his powerful height. “You’re not the Pythia.”

“If you prefer to think so.”

“Waste of my time,” John Winchester mutters as petulant as any child, and leaves her trailer with a frustrated tread and the slam of the door.

“He didn’t pay, either,” Danica says, using her complaints to cover her fear. 

“Only charlatans make them pay for the truth, Danica,” says another man, the only indicators of his presence the scent of sunlight and fresh breezes.

“Father,” May’s little sister says, her voice little more than a devout breath.

“Danica, my girl.” The Oracle can hear the smile in his voice, his joy in seeing them. “You’ve done well, today, both of you.”

“What just happened?” May asks, uninterested in his praises. She had ceased to need them once she realized the enormous burden of her so-called gift. “I have never seen anything like it. First the girl, then the hunter-“

“I am aware, May.”

“But what was it I saw?” The future is like a lead weight on her shoulders, pressing down, exhausting her. Two prophecies in one day is not unheard of, but it has been years since she’d had to face the power of it. 

Apollo comes close to her, pulls her against him so that her head rests against his side like when she was little and the visions were so overwhelming that even her twin could not comfort her. His hand covers her sightless eyes, and she sighs in relief as the gift of prophecy is lifted, and her soul is finally allowed to escape its mortal prison.

“It’s the apocalypse, daughter” Apollo murmurs as he feels the flutter of May’s soul bursting free of her body and leaping into the arms of her Reaper. The last Oracle has been born, and he can finally allow his May to rest. “It’s just not the one everyone expects.”


	17. EPILOGUE

It is so easy to slip through security.

It’s an embarrassment, really. Athena had insinuated herself into the highest echelons of the White House months ago, and yet she hadn’t bothered to institute any magical security. Oh, she’d put up plenty of warding against both heaven and hell, but nothing against their own Pantheon, nothing that prevents him from strolling right into the heavily guarded vaults of the CDC.

He took the last of David’s soul to walk through the alarms without notice, to shut down the video cameras and the pressure sensitive floors. The key pads blink off as he passes them, electronic locks fail and click open in his presence, elevator doors slide open at his command.

The vaults are buried deep, four stories down at least, along with several top secret labs and some biological warfare research that the US government should be ashamed of pursuing. The three foot thick steel door swings open, revealing a room lined with refrigerated units, and in each unit, some of the deadliest, most virulent diseases and viruses ever to affect the human race. 

He bypasses polio and tuberculosis without a second glance, HIV and SARS, ebola, small pox, and one of the nastiest strains of meningitis he’s ever seen. He notes they have managed to procure a strain of the 1918 Spanish flu from somewhere – and don’t think he’s not going to pick that one up on his way out – and a half a dozen strains of bubonic plague he’s going to have to add to his shopping cart as well.

But his end game, the real reason for his visit is vault 151.

With a flick of his wrist, the secondary and tertiary alarms disengage with a whining beep and locks on the refrigeration unit tumble open. The door pops open and a cloud of frozen air rolls out. There are four hermetically sealed vials inside, three with samples of a dead virus, but the last is swimming with a couple million living strains of the Croatoan virus.

Gently, he removes the vial of living Croatoan and holds it up to the light, peers at the eager little viruses, marvels at the alien construction of the DNA. It’s truly a thing of beauty; a perversion of the soul encoded into a physical virus scraped off of the fleshy walls of Hell itself, blood borne and incurable with nothing less than a bullet to the brain. Had the Winchesters not successfully destroyed the initial shipment three years ago, it would have overrun the United States within weeks, and within a year, eighty percent of the human race would have been mindless, rabid zombies with no other drive than to kill and mutilate and infect.

Lucifer’s goal, his only goal, had been to raze his Father’s creation, to pervert the human souls the Creator had valued so much. His use of the virus had been very much a smash and grab sort of operation, even with the initial subterfuge of the swine flu outbreak, and he had to say, he was a little disappointed in Plague’s hand in that. He’d always expected the Horseman to have a little more umph to him when he finally showed up; to say the anthropomorphic personification of disease didn’t live up to the hype is an understatement.

He’s got a better plan though, something slow and insidious, something that will make Athena’s inner strategist weep in envy, something that will destroy his enemies – his family, his siblings, and most especially the murderous little brother who should have been the vehicle to revive their father but killed him instead.

He’d known Ben would never choose Apollo, had even told him as much, and he had been oh so right.

He swallows back the impotent rage he’s felt since the moment he felt his father’s _numen_ die, still caught in the chest of his murderer, and slips the vial of Croatoan into his pocket. He adds the other three vials of dead virus as well then raids vault 107 for its Spanish flu, vaults 24 through 31 for its bubonic plague, and vault 73 for a nasty looking flesh eating bacteria to tinker with in his spare time. He starts out of the vault, reconsiders, and goes back for vaults 109, 144, and 248. All mild and easily treatable diseases, but if he’s going for slow and insidious, he might want to use just a little bit of subtlety.

Then he strolls easy-peasy right back out again, not bothering to lock up behind himself.

His theft will be noticed immediately, anyway – if the missing Croatoan doesn’t freak them out, he’s sure the missing Spanish flu will - so why bother? They’ll probably just blame some human terrorist group, and besides, the powers that be are going to be too busy pretty soon to worry about the theft of a few nasty diseases. 

The angels had fallen last night, crashing to earth in a rain of fire and light, and the earth is now crawling with hundreds of thousands of the heavenly host. Though right now they are scrambling to find vessels, soon they’ll get it together and start trying to exert control of some kind on the earthly plane. Athena is going to have quite the mess on her hands; she may have settled herself in a place of great power, but four members of Congress are capable of carrying an angel without exploding, not to mention three foreign ambassadors, a supreme court justice, the Secretary of Defense, and the Vice President himself.

The chaos will be glorious, and in the turmoil, no one will notice him, no one will see what he’s doing until it’s too late.

He steps sideways and across space into a lab once operated by Richard Roman Enterprises, now abandoned and forgotten deep in the Canadian Rockies. No one except him has been here in ages. Dried Leviathan goo still clings to the walls, but the electricity and other utilities are still running and the labs are fully functional. 

He unloads his loot into the refrigeration unit of lab he’s cleaned up for himself, but he can’t help but to hold the vial of living Croatoan up to the light one more time, to watch the strains of virus drifting and rolling and swimming in their liquid matrix.

His family has some insane notion that they can return paganism is former glory in the vacuum left by the failed apocalypse and the death of all the archangels. They seem to think that with the lack of response from Heaven and the Creator, the human race will slowly but surely return to the worship of the old gods, that the monotheistic religions will wither on the vine and in their place, pagan divinity will renew and regenerate, that this time of darkness and starvation will somehow fall away.

Maybe they’re right. Maybe that’s exactly what will happen. But that’s all entirely dependent on human worship, and if he has his way, there aren’t going to be any humans left to do any worshipping.

He has always been a pariah to his family. Raise the dead a few times out of deluded, youthful arrogance, and what happens? Zeus’s lightning bolt to his physical form and an eternity of being insulted and rejected by his own family, of only being able to take physical form by committing Kronos’s crime, of being ignored by his own father in favor of a host of semi-divine brats who lived and died without every really knowing who their real father was. And Apollo is dead now, dead by his youngest and last child’s hand, and so is Zeus and any other member of his family who might have once had the power to stop him.

A threat to the natural order, his family liked to call him. 

Asclepius smiles at the viruses, so eager to spread and kill and infect. 

Well, they aren’t wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For further author's notes go [HERE](http://wonderfulwrites.livejournal.com/183600.html).


End file.
